Senior British politician says that her family was so poor that they had to kill their cats

Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

Thornberry on the left talking to Corbyn

I am surprised by this story. I have held back writing about it but it keeps popping up. Emily Thornberry is a senior Labour politician in the UK. She said that her background was very poor. This is because her father abandoned the family unannounced when she was seven years old. Her mother had to raise three children on her own and quite naturally it was a tough struggle with very limited funding.

As a consequence, she says that:

“The cats had to be put down. I suppose my mum just couldn’t cope with three kids, no money, going into council housing…and cats.”

I don’t wish to be overly critical but why was there a need to kill their cats because they were poor? There was the obvious alternative of taking them to a rescue centre where someone else would probably have come forward to adopt them and to look after them. That would have saved their lives. I don’t know where this logic comes from about being poor and being unable to look after your cats and then you have to kill them. Just being poor does not mean that you can’t support a cat. There are millions of poor yet good cat guardians. And then to authorise their destruction: not good in my book.

It would seem that Emily Thornberry is justifying her mother’s decision to have the cats killed. Or at least she is failing to challenge it. She should. She presents a poor personal image in respect of animal rights.