Woman secretly filmed pulling her cat down the street on a lead
How bad is this form of cat abuse? It’s been uploaded to Facebook where it has received hundreds of derogatory comments from outraged viewers. It appears to me that she is treating her cat as a dog expecting her cat to walk along behind, obediently. This indicates to me that she does not have a good knowledge of the domestic cat.
It is interesting that the RSPCA said that they had “concerns” about the handling of the cat. The cat is obviously in distress but as I said in the opening paragraph how bad is it? Did she deserve to be so heavily criticised by hundreds of people?
The woman being videoed was unaware that she was being filmed but when she noticed the video maker she continued to do what she was doing. That, of course, is not a good sign and shows a bad attitude.
The person who made the video, Miss Dance, says she intervened after she had filmed her and suggested that she might want to pick her cat up instead. The woman ignored her. Perhaps the woman was stressed? Or was she just rude. These days people don’t like being told what to do by strangers even if the advice is good.
Quite a lot of people, would comment that a cat should not be on a lead in any case. But perhaps the woman had no alternative because, as can be seen, she lives in a built-up area.
Any cat guardian of any quality would never do this. What she is doing indicates that her attitude is poor towards cat caretaking. That I think is perhaps the most important thing to come out of this.
Is an interesting comment:
“But it seems to be okay if that was a toddler on reins. Human hypocrisy.”
Is that a good point? We see mothers pushing and pulling their children around to get them to do something. Perhaps that is not a fair comparison because humans understand (arguably even a child) that he doing wrong or something against his mother’s wishes while the cat companion does not have that awareness.
Here is another interesting comment:
“We do the same to dogs but that’s okay. Hypocrites.”
I don’t think it is okay to do the same thing to dogs but it is done without criticism. Some people I feel have overreacted by demanding that she be prosecuted for animal cruelty and banned from having animals.
The place is Welwyn Garden City in Herfordshire, UK, which is about 40 miles north of London.