WHAT MORE CAN WE TAKE FROM CATS?
Many thousands of years ago cats lived wild and free, they hunted and killed prey for survival, they enjoyed the fresh air, the sun and the unpolluted water of the rivers.
Yes life was hard and it was survival of the fittest, but cats lived their lives to the full, they found mates and their kittens were born with the instinct needed to survive, breed and ensure their species lived on.
Then humans decided cats were worth domesticating to keep their homes rodent free.
It did work both ways, the cats did their job and were given shelter and protection in return.
But was it too high a price for cats to pay?
Gradually they became pets and slowly but surely their natural lives have been taken from them more and more.
Wild to Domestic – Poster by Ruth AKA Kattaddorra.
Most pet cats are neutered young and while this is in a way morally wrong, we do it for their benefit and to prevent unwanted kittens being born. There are already not enough homes to go around the homeless cats cast out by people who should never have had a cat in the first place.
Also neutering both sexes prevents health problems for the cats, an unspayed female cat will keep coming into season and if not mated may suffer problems of her uterus.
An uncastrated male will wander away from home, get into fights with other toms and suffer injuries. He is also at risk of being run over as his territory is large in his quest to find a mate.
We feed our cats an un-natural diet of processed food and even if we buy the best for them it’s far from the raw flesh diet that cats were designed to eat.
In the wild the cats who survived became immune to diseases, now they have to be inoculated against the various, sometimes fatal illnesses they are at risk of contracting.
As humans grew in numbers and wanted cars and more roads built, it became dangerous in busy places and nowadays many cats are being deprived of their freedom.
They are confined inside houses and flats, some with nothing to do but look out of the window or sleep.
Cats are crepuscular, they come awake from dusk until dawn, but most, even indoor/outdoor cats are kept indoors at night for their own safety.
They have had to adjust to sleeping our hours, yet they must often yearn to get out and enjoy a good hunting spree.
Because of the growing number of cats kept strictly indoors in the USA and Canada, declawing began! This must be the worst loss of all to the cats who undergo that cruel surgery.
They are deprived of even play hunting, they are expected to live indoors for their entire lifetime with no means of exercising their muscles, they have no claws to dig into a scratching post and even have difficulty jumping safely to a height.
Their lives have become akin to being an ornament.
Yes they are safe and fed and their ‘owners’ love them in their own way I suppose! I say owners, because the people who declaw their cat do it because they own that cat, true cat lovers are cat caretakers and they would never ever deprive their pet of his claws.
I find it sad that wild cats are being interbred with domestic cats to create domestic hybrids such as Bengals and Savannahs, because as well cared for as these cats may be by their breeders and the people who buy them, they must deep down especially feel the lack of the freedom of their wild ancestors.
We can’t rewrite history but in my opinion the human race has a lot to answer for to the animal kingdom and sadly we are still wanting more and the more we have, the more the animals are being deprived of, or even made extinct.
Where will it all end?
