The cult of celebrity and the abuse of cats
by Michael
(London, UK)
Lady Gaga Meat Dress - someone tried to copy it with a cat. Photo by Beth77 (creative commons on Flickr 17-40-11)
The cult of celebrity and the abuse of cats are two uncomfortable and unpleasant aspects of society that came together when a young women of 20 drowned the family's cat, cut it up and dressed herself in its body parts to emulate Lady Gaga.
This is both sad and shocking. It highlights what is wrong with modern society. Young people should not be worshipping entertainers as they do. They make them into gods when they are people like anyone else. In fact they are often less of a person than the anonymous, forgotten yet decent person down the street who helps her neighbour or who does charity work, all unnanounced and without fanfare and pay. This is the person that I look up to and who deserves praise and admiration. They are the role models yet they are invisible.
People should respect other animals on the planet. We have no right to think that we can do with them as we wish. We are the dominant species on the planet, which carries responsibilities to care for the planet and its inhabitants, not the right to rape it and mess it up for instant gratification without any thought for the long term consequences.
Cats, wild and domestic are awfully vulnerable, I am afraid. Elisa just posted an article about a toothless cat. The cat is four years of age. What in heavens name happened? Cats of four, a relatively young age, do not lose all their teeth bar one. It seems that the previous owners had him detoothed and declawed all four paws, incidentally. That is on a par with the behaviour of this young women - utterly mindless cruelty and abuse.
Some of the worse excesses of mankind are manifest in his treatment of the domestic cat because the cat is vulnerable and can serve as an outlet for man's worse traits of cruelty and plain nastiness.
There should be less domestic cats, all of which should be living in loving homes. That is an unreachable dream. It is time for the lawmakers to expend some effort on creating legislation that changes the way we keep cats and companion animals generally because people will not change of their own accord.
This is an unpopular concept with many people because they quite rightly like to be allowed to make their own choices free of government interference, but change is required to curb cat abuse, irresponsible companion animal caretaking, and at a more fundamental level to change the direction in which society is going.