Intro: This is the debasing of life through YouTube. YouTube lacks ethical guidance. Sorry Google but sadly that sentence is true. There is so much rubbish on YouTube and it is a breeding ground for dumbed down behavior and trolling comments. So many comments are just pointless and expressions of anger and stupidity feeding off exploitative videos. There is some good stuff on YouTube (of course) but too much of it shows the worse side of humanity.

OK, to the video: put a binder clip, or a banker’s clip or foldover clip on a cat’s neck just above the shoulder blades and you get the same reaction from the cat as shown in the animated gif file on this page; passivity, no movement, deactivation.

In this instance a vet or veterinary assistant puts a large binder clip, which you can buy at a stationery shop, on the loose skin of an adult cat that mother cat grabs with her teeth and, voilà, you get instantly passive behavior from the cat.

The comments to the video are, as usual, by idiotic male (probably?) humans arguing about nothing except what they said, which is meaningless! Sorry but that needs to be said because it is significant. You can view the view on YouTube by clicking on this link (opens a new tab or window).

So, what is going on? Why is a vet doing this for the camera? Is this standard procedure for a vet to calm a cat? Isn’t this a bit cheap? The video has had lots of views; over 4 million. People are interested in this. Will it lead to cat owners in homes, behind closed doors, doing the same thing? What will the cat do after several minutes?

The point is that this is irresponsible behavior by the vet. The kitten deactivation response cannot be permanent. After a certain amount of time the cat/kitten should stop being passive because, in nature, the mother would have moved her kitten within a set time frame.

This is a nasty video.