Taylor Swift: PLEASE put your cat in a carrier when walking around NYC!
Taylor Swift walks out of her apartment into NYC with her cat under her arm
The words of the title are by Arnold Plotnick DVM on Twitter. On the face of it he is correct but if his tweet was based solely on the photo we see he may wrong… perhaps Taylor Swift was walking to a waiting car about ten paces away and in the car was a cat carrier 😉 Perhaps also the area where she lives is very quiet and cat friendly. However…..
…this did catch my eye a while ago and I was not alone in being somewhat surprised at seeing a cat being carried out into New York City in this fashion supported by one arm. Although Olivia, her cat is adequately supported, the obvious reason why it is unsafe for Olivia is because she may, for whatever reason, jump off. Anything could cause that reaction. Jumping off at that point could lead to serious injury if cars are present, and worse.
Olivia could end up lost and bewildered. We never see someone walking outside in a big city with a cat like this unless they are a celebrity and the cameramen have been notified beforehand 😉 – this is a publicity stunt at the expense of the domestic cat it seems to me.
Another thing I don’t like is that the reason why Miss Swift is carrying Olivia in this way is because it looks cool and it looks like she is treating her cat as an accessory. We, the cat lovers of the world, don’t like that because it hints at an incorrect relationship between cat and person. The true cat lover would be heaving around a cumbersome cat carrier which would be very unphotogenic, would it not? But it would be practical.
Taylor Swift is a well-known cat lover (great) and therefore in some ways she has an added responsibility to present to the world excellent cat caretaking because people – young girls perhaps – look up to her as a role model.
High profile cat lovers have the opportunity to promote the welfare of cats. This is very valuable. It does not take much effort for a person like Miss Swift to learn a bit about cat behavior, health and welfare and then think how she could promote the profile (the public image) of the domestic cat in the world and above all the welfare of this much loved companion animal.
Doing what she is doing in the public eye tends to achieve the opposite: it portrays the cat as an accessory for the celebrities. This reduces the cat to something like a handbag – not good.