Why some people feel more compassion and empathy for animals than fellow humans

You may remember a story in the past about a woman who stabbed a man because the man hurt the woman’s cat. This happens occasionally (unsurprisingly, I’d say). In one such example a woman stabbed a man to death. Of course it was murder. She did it because the man threw her cat against a wall – he was frustrated in his inability to fix a television believe it or not. The cat survived. The woman is serving a 15 year prison sentence for murder. It happened in Russia.

But the point I’m making is that the emotions which some people feel when their cat is being hurt by someone they know is stronger than if another person is being hurt. Why is this?

The answer must be to do with the innocence of the animal compared to the lack of innocence of humans. The domestic cat is an innocent creature. They live instinctively. They can do no wrong. Only humans can judge them as doing something wrong in their eyes but they’re not actually doing anything wrong. The cat is doing something that the human does not like.

It is the innocence of the animal which touches a nerve in a lot of human beings. When that innocence is attacked it is something which is totally unacceptable to some people. It is akin to a person attacking a young baby or young child. Violence against children engenders a similar reaction in most people.

To some people it is inexplicable why people feel more compassion and empathy for animals than for fellow humans. I am one of those people who feels more compassion and empathy for animals than for fellow humans and it is not inexplicable to me.

As I said, it is about innocence. The beauty of innocence in a creature. You cannot hurt such a creature. There can never be a reason for it because they can do no wrong. They cannot be malicious and nasty. They cannot be bad. There is a purity about innocence which protects them from criticism.

When innocence is attacked by a depraved person (and for a person to attack a domestic cat you have to be depraved in my opinion) there is a stark contrast in attitude and behaviour. The cat is behaving instinctively while the human is behaving in a distorted, sociopathic and criminal manner. You can only but hate such a person and feel great sympathy for the cat unless of course you hate cats and are the sort of person who could hurt innocence.

Depraved = morally corrupt, wicked.

Please note this: I am writing about the human’s relationship with, primarily, the domestic cat. I’m not writing about wild animals and the relationship between one wild animal and another or the relationship between the wild parents of wild offspring as referred to in the first comment on this page. That person totally misunderstood what I’m trying to get across. I thought I was clear about this but obviously some people are too interested in criticising me and finding ways to do so.