The question is rude and therefore so is the action. There is a fat guy who has a successful YouTube channel about four ginger tabby cats. In this video he refers to his uncastrated male ginger tabby’s balls as pom-poms. He shows them off to the world by lifting up Helios’s tail in front of the video camera.
It’s a bit like a porno upskirt video at that point. It has that flavour to me. A bit sordid and almost pornographic. Can you have pornographic cat videos!? Yes, I think you can and this is one reason why I dislike the video despite its reasonable success (37k views).
The video maker has prevented playback on websites other than YouTube. So, if you want to see it, please click this link.
It is crude and disrespectful of Helios. I am going to be hard on this guy. His handling of Helios is not great either: too rough and ready. Not gentle enough. The way he flicks his hands around Helios and picks him up as he tells the camera that Helios does not like to be picked up! As I said, disrespectful human behaviour.
I think he was lucky to not get a scratch. It is a testament to the benign and friendly character of this soft-hearted cat. It is evidence that ginger tabbies are laid back types.
The man does not send a good message to viewers on how to interact with domestic cats. I don’t want to go on but there is this underlying responsibility which applies to all video makers of cat videos and that is to make sure that they don’t encourage mishandling of cats.
It is a fairly minor point but a major reason why domestic cats are abandoned to shelters is because their cat is believed to be aggressive because they scratch and bite. The truth is that the cat is not aggressive but reactive. Reactive to mishandling.
Domestic cats act instinctively most of the time. They are in a strange human world. Depending on the cat’s character, it does not take much for a cat to have a swipe at a child or adult if they mishandle them. It is normally overly-rough handling which stimulates a play-fight response which invariably incorporates scratching and biting.
It is the old adage: respect the cat which means respecting the innate wild cat character – the raw cat – inside all domestic cats. Self-education about cat behaviour is essential to good cat guardianship.
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