Yes, Jay Leno likes cats and cars! On a QWERTY keyboard the letter “t” is adjacent to the letter “r”. That’s quite significant because if you ask Google a question such as, “How many cats does Jay Leno have?” Google will find articles which tell you how many cars he has! Google will probably think that I’m asking whether Jay Leno likes cars or not. Anyway, he likes cats and cars and it’s great to know. To the best of my knowledge and based upon his appearance on The Ellen Show he has one black-and-white random bred (moggy) cat who he loves a hell of a lot, that is clear.
I don’t know how he adopted his cat. It would not surprise me if he adopted his cat from a cat or animal shelter.
I have watched quite a few of his YouTube car videos. He has a very successful YouTube channel in which he shows off his car collection, which you probably know is substantial. It must be worth hundreds of millions American dollars. But then he’s worth hundreds of millions of American dollars. A quick check on the Internet tells me that he is, in fact, worth an estimated $400 million. Perhaps a lot of that wealth is tied up in his cars and good on him if it is. His garage is immaculate.
He does not cut corners when presenting. In the video on this page it appears that he has employed a video editor to create an amusing section with his cat to prove that cats are smarter than dogs. He probably knows that they are not. In general, if you asked a hundred people whether dogs are smarter than cats I would expect that about 60% of them would agree. But there’s not much difference and it’s a pointless discussion. And impossible to assess.
On a more serious note, and also concerning cats and dogs, Jay Leno has publicly apologised for his jokes about Asian Americans eating dogs or cats. Between 2002 and 2012 it is said that he made at least nine jokes about Korean or Chinese people eating cats or dogs. He thought the jokes were harmless but realised later that it was wrong. He said that he was making fun of America’s enemy, North Korea, and that there was an element of truth in his jokes. I’ve not heard his jokes about cat and dog meat.
All I know is that, from my perspective, the eating of cat and dog meat is immoral. I know a lot of people don’t think like that. They see no difference to eating cat and dog meat and eating livestock reared to be eaten. But I see a difference on two counts: firstly cats and dogs are often people’s pets and secondly the contract between cats and dogs and people did not include a condition that we could eat them. The terms and conditions stated that cats would keep us company and entertain us and we in return would look after them.
As for dogs, the terms and conditions of the contract entered into about 20,000 years ago was that they would often work for us and help us and in return we would provide them with security, food and companionship. Eating cat and dog meat is a breach of that unwritten, verbal contract. I know animals cannot enter into a contract but I’m using the idea to make the point.
Therefore, I don’t think Jay Leno should apologise for making jokes about Asians eating cat and dogs unless there was something in the jokes that was unpleasant, which I doubt because Jay Leno is not an unpleasant character. Quite the contrary, in fact, he is a genuinely nice man and very talented.
There are very many pages on this website about cat meat because I object to it so much. One of the great inhumane aspects of it is that the animals are killed brutally and before being killed they are transported in a very brutal way. The whole process is highly unpleasant and it sticks in the mind unfortunately. It is a very basic and uneducated habit. It is uncivilised in my honest opinion but I don’t want to upset any Asians. And let’s be clear: not all Asians eat cats and dogs. I think it is relatively quite rare in China and to the best of my knowledge it occurs mainly in the south.
