Heartrending picture of a street cat sleeping on a street dog

I must say, for me, this is a heartrending picture to be perfectly honest. It shows what is wrong with our relationship with domestic cats and domestic dogs. There are too many unwanted domestic cats and dogs. And in developing countries no one in authority is doing anything about it.

The mutual support that this cat and dog are showing each other is what’s beautiful about the picture. They’re doing it alone when they should be in someone’s home, supported and loved by a human guardian/caretaker. That’s what they’re missing and it shouldn’t happen.

To me, the photograph screams of human failure matched in equal measure by animal success in surviving. No doubt, however, they will both live quite short lives relative to the lives that they should have live in a good home.

I should imagine that in the place where they are living (or lived), which looks like a developing country, they are completely overlooked. They may well be considered pests and vermin. They may be hounded and persecuted, hit with sticks and shooed away.

It is all so painfully wrong. And it’s compounded by the fact that in developing countries nobody does anything about it. Nobody is trying to stop the creation of unwanted domestic cats and dogs. There is no sense of pressing urgency to take proactive measures. Is all very ad hoc and careless. The result is a difficult, short and I’m sure at times painful life for street cats and dogs.