In an anonymous question to an agony aunt online, a cat owner asked what she should do after her neighbor’s daughter drove over her cat companion and extraordinarily the daughter’s mother was pestering her to comfort her daughter because she was traumatized.
This is a real story. It happened in October 2017. The neighbor’s 16-year-old daughter was, we are told, driving irresponsibly at the time of the accident. She was driving and texting at the same time. This caused her to drive over the cat which must have been on the road (I have assumed this but perhaps the cat was on the driveway. This would put a different complexion on the matter). The cat belonged to the teenager’s neighbors. The teenager was horrified by what she had done.
The teenager’s mother told the cat’s owner that her daughter was traumatized by what had happened. She wanted to help her daughter. She came up with the idea of asking the cat’s owner to talk to her daughter to try and comfort her. The cat owner is asking for advice as to what to do next.
As expected, the cat owner is angry and as far as she’s concerned the best thing for her to do it to keep her distance from the girl and her family. But the girl’s parents won’t back off. The cat owner simply cannot comply with the request. She thinks the girl is lucky that she didn’t hit a person and kill them. She asks the agony aunt whether she’s behaving badly in not wanting to alleviate the emotional turmoil of the teenager.
What would you do? You can guess what the agony aunt said. She makes it clear that it is not awful for the woman to not want to be involved in comforting the teenager. It is normal for the teenager to feel guilty about what she has done and that she should feel this emotion.
Her parents should talk to their daughter and encourage her to channel her emotions and feelings into productive changes in the way she drives. But this is the girl’s parent’s job. It is not the job of the cat owner. She advises that the next time she meets with her neighbor she should ask them to manage their daughter’s guilt and to tell them politely that she is not available to help the girl manage her feelings of guilt. In other words to be firm with them and let them resolve the matter themselves.
Do you agree with the advice and do have a comment to make? I can think of something but will keep quiet about it this time. If the cat owner should agree to try and comfort the girl what could she say. Something like “don’t worry, it was our fault for letting our cat wander around outside on roads or driveways….” Perhaps it was something like that which the girl’s mother was hoping to receive.
P.S. Sorry no photos for this article. Source: Slate.com
When I was a young boy I thought having a bb gun would be fun. I did have fun shooting at various cans and things in my back yard until a bird flew over and with one shot I brought it down. It was a stupid human moment and I was horrified. I ran to see where it fell and I saw it gasping, dying. I was sickened. I don’t know what that did to me but I vowed to NEVER do any animal harm again. Not even by accident. It should always produce guilt and grief. That girl’s mother isn’t a good one. It’s not the dead cat’s owner’s duty to comfort the guilty girl, and I bet the girl will end up blaming the owner’s cat for “making her feel bad” about the “accident”, and the girls’ mother will probably gripe to that effect forever.
My comments and thoughts on what to do with the stupid teenager aren’t politically correct nor are they printable. Having helped raise 5 brothers and 1 sister and 3 of my own, plus giving help to any teenagers who my kids brought home, I’ve seen too much of the “give the brats what they want and don’t criticize them for their mistakes”!!!
If the girl was indeed driving recklessly by playing on her phone while behind the wheel, I’d agree to talk to her! Just so that I could tell her to her face that she killed an innocent life because she couldn’t pry her vain nose away from her social life for a few minutes while driving.
All of this snowflake nonsense of handling people with lace gloves and sugarcoating bad deeds is why our kids are becoming assholes with zero respect for others or the consequences of their actions.
Own up to what you did, admit you screwed up, learn from the mistake, become a stronger person. tl;dr – grow the fuck up, brat.
Yes, I like your comment – strongly worded but I agree what you say. It is all too politically correct and unreal for many kids. They need to join the real world.
Simple answer: If your cat craps in another’s life, that’s YOUR responsibility to clean-up the mess it made. That mess in everyone else’s lives wouldn’t have happened if you were never born. There is no other answer.
Next question.
Sorry but you off-topic because you hate cats and people who like cats. You can’t contain yourself. Your bile leaks out of you like a poison. Try and stay on topic. If you re-comment it must be polite, sensible, reasonable and on-topic.
Apparently you’re not even intelligent enough to comprehend the use of a not-off-topic (and inclusive) metaphor. Why is nobody surprised.
They would not like what I have to say to them about their daughter and I would tell them if they ever come anywhere near me again they better be prepared to get their heads handed to them. No wonder that little bitch ran over the cat, her parents have fucked up ideas that thinking the only person who matters is their dear little princess. I would have filed a police report that she was texting even if it doesnt do any good just to show them I mean business.
Am I living in a parallel universe or something? What kind of craziness is this?! That girl SHOULD feel guilty, and her parents should tell her to put her stinking cell phone away when she’s driving. It is correct, as someone said, it very easily could have been a child… although to me, killing a beloved cat is nearly as bad an accident. I don’t know about this cat owner, but I would have been so traumatized to lose my cat that way, I would have frequented the psychiatrist’s office. Then, I would send the bill to that girl’s parents. This is just nuts.
It is nuts. The teenager’s mother is being unrealistic and perhaps the parents are at fault in raising their daughter in a way which may have contributed this accident.
Good thing I’m not in that situation. My anger and grief might get in the way of being comforting to the teenager. As the cat owner, I might agree to talk with the teenager and it could go something like this: If you (the teenager) had not been texting, which is ILLEGAL, the cat would still be alive and you (the teenager) would not be feeling any guilt.
Or is that too harsh?
Spot on! Definitely not too harsh. She needs to learn a lesson. She needs to drive legally at least.