I suppose it had to happen again. It has happened in the past: tattooing cats, and inevitably it causes uproar amongst decent minded people.
In this instance a tattoo artist whose nickname is ‘Qiangzi’ decided to tattoo the right foreleg of his kitten. He runs a tattoo parlour in Jining, China.
His exploits were reported in China’s People’s Daily Online. The man believes that tattooing is a form of art and he wanted to give it to his pet kitten. What a clever idea! Not. He said that he gave his cat anaesthetics before shaving the fur of his cat’s leg.
He also says that he inserted semi-permanent ink into the kitten. He used an eyebrow tattoo pen. The ink is made of a plant extract he says which causes no harm. He also says that the tattoo will fade out as the skin changes over time. He was careful with the anaesthetics he said:
“I bought the anaesthetics from an animal hospital and an excessive dosage of it could kill my cat.”
No kidding! I’m glad you were careful because you jeopardized the life of your cat in order to experiment on him/her with your so-called “art”.
In typical modern, social media style, he posted a video of the tattooing to a closed messaging group on social media. He then deleted it after he was heavily criticised for his cruel behaviour. He has since realised that he was at fault. A blessing.
He took his kitten to an animal rescue centre and begged forgiveness from the public. But he wants his cat back. He donated 50 yuan to the rescue centre which is about £5.50 and asked them to let him take his cat back home. He was refused. The cat will be rehomed. Fortunately, he’s right about the tattoo ink. It is fading.
A worker at the rescue centre says that she has sterilised the cat’s wound daily and the fur is growing back. What can we say? I don’t think we can say much better than the chief executive officer at PETA, India.
“It’s highly unethical and cruel to subject animals to procedures that offer them no benefit and only cause them harm.”
Apropos declawing, you could say the same thing about that!
Note: cat identification can be done with tattoos:
Thoroughbred race horses are tattooed with a serial number under their upper lip for identification. On a cat’s ear might be a good idea, though it runs the risk of causing aural hematoma. Those the only legitimate uses I can think of. I think it’s a stupid idea to tattoo even a sphinx, perhaps especially a sphinx cat. Give people a toy to play with and there will be those who will abuse it and often a pet animal. Geese! Also, I guess practicing medicine without a license is fine over there? I was accused of that and viciously verbally abused by a veterinarian once. I forget what the thing was but I remember it wasn’t justified in my opinion (treating a wound I think it was). My cat Einstein had an aural hematoma and ended up with the folded ear as seen here. It was a costly and painful treatment to save the ear at all, too.