What do you think about the lint roller cat? Do you find it funny and clever? Or perhaps you find it ethically unacceptable. You can tell me in the poll below.
Now I’ll tell you what I think! For the record, in general I don’t like political correctness. I don’t like censoring people. I like free speech and the truth. I like liberal views and a live and let live world provided we respect each other and don’t harm each other. I include human to human interactions and human to animal interactions.
I believe that this clever image, which incidentally is a bit of fancy photoshopping, is not a good idea. For visitors who are unsure, it is not real . The whole thing was created on a computer using software such as Photoshop.
As an aside, you can see that the cat is a flat faced Persian. What some people call an “Ultra Persian” because it has been bred to extremes to create the unnaturally flat face which makes it ideal for this project. It sort of fits in well and makes the image more believable.
I do find it very clever, I will admit, but for me it does not respect the cat. It demeans the cat and it reflects a relationship with the domestic cat that is not quite in balance. It sort of sends out the signal that we can abuse and use the cat as we wish. A lot of people do that and so I don’t like to see images that even in a small, almost insignificant, way encourages cat abuse.
I know a lot of people will think that I am being overly prudish and politically correct. I disagree. I just want to see less abuse of the cat. There is too much of it and sometimes it is almost casual in its nature. A lack of education is the major problem and some people will actually believe, when looking at this picture, that a real live Persian cat was used to create the image. It is that clever.
I believe that words and images can gradually alter our perceptions and sensitivities. We need to be careful about how we use images. After all, advertising is all about that, gently indoctrinating people into believing certain things about products. And people are very impressionable particularly young people. If we are to change attitudes towards the domestic cat in the interests of cat welfare we should be careful in our use of images, clever, innocent or not.
Note:
- My thanks to Elena for showing me the picture. You’re a great lady and;
- As to copyright regarding this picture, I am in breach of copyright in publishing it here but I claim fair use in the interests of education and cat welfare and on the basis that it does no commercial harm to the owners of the copyright. If the author disagrees, I’ll remove it immediately on notification (please leave a comment).
no, 110 in fact 🙂