Sadly, some people kill their pets when they become an inconvenience. Fair? What about when people, or children, are an inconvenience - should we solve that problem by 'putting them down'? Put in that context, the overwhelming answer would be NO.
So it vexes me to no end when our media endorses the idea of a death sentence for a pet who peed in a closet, as acceptable. Just listen to these lines by Kate Legge who wrote a column in The Australian today:
So it vexes me to no end when our media endorses the idea of a death sentence for a pet who peed in a closet, as acceptable. Just listen to these lines by Kate Legge who wrote a column in The Australian today:
My girlfriends cat has been urinating inside her wardrobe...She is a softie when it comes to living creatures...without thinking, I asked whether she was going to put Bess down. I blame my brother. In his house, pet incontinence carries the death sentence
If she started peeing in my closet, I reckon she'd fall victim to my brother's cruel philosophy.
Bess's livelihood was never in doubt. My girlfriend spent hours scrubbing and washing and rinsing and deodorising the spot where her cat squatted. It's me who she's sent to the doghouse.
Read without the context of the full article, one could say that Kate is anti-euthanasia for pet annoyance. She does say it is a 'cruel philosophy'. But this is just a bit of language fluff to prevent the action from really being seen as cruel and associated with her - afterall, if you name it as such, you can't truely be cruel. (Similar to that line, 'No offense, but...' followed by something quite offensive).
Kate shifts guilt away from herself in a similar vein, by calling it her 'brother's philosophy'. And yet it is also hers - she quite clearly says that she would kill her cat if it 'started peeing in (her) closet'. Coupled with the admiration showered upon the girlfriend's wardrobe, and the analysis of pet actions to render them as self seeking rather than loving or concerned, the values in this article privilege material possessions, ease, and not living creatures. Little wonder then that Kate paints her friend as a somewhat loveable, ditzy, soppy woman - with the implicit suggestion that cleaning up after her cat was ridiculous.
There are just SO many problems here (even aside from 'livelihood' being incorrectly used - I think she means 'Bess's life'). Kate's final lines are an attempt at wry humour. Here, she thinks she is hard-done-by because her friend objected to her death-sentence suggestion - AND she is asking for our empathy. She actually assumes and encourages us to sympathise with her values.
Kate, your column was not funny. It promotes the view of animals as material objects. It promotes getting rid of pets if they 'malfunction'. The Australian is no less responsible - as a newspaper, you are surely not allowed to incite animal cruelty, and I would suggest that killing a cat simply because it peed somewhere a human does not like, is certainly cruel. Printing such a view both endorses and promotes this cruelty.
And this view also displays a colossol ignorance of cats. Firstly, the cat in this story was not 'incontinent'. She had perfect control of her bladder. Bess just decided to go in a place the human didn't like. It's actually not uncommon - and you don't cure it by killing the cat.
Most cases of inappropriate elimination occur because the cat is sick. The appropriate course of action is to take them to the vet. The next appropriate course of action is to figure out what the human did wrong- we might have put the litter tray in a noisy scary place, used unpleasant litter, not cleaned the tray, made the tray hard to use with a hood or cover. Or, to debunk another myth Kate espouses, our cat may be picking up on human stress. It is comforting for them to mingle their scent (pee) with the human's they love (think well used place or personal item). From personal experience, I can say that that meant peeing on our bed when my husband was ill with leukaemia.
Cats are smart, intuitive and readily give and receive love. Surely we can love them back when they do things that inconvenience us. Afterall, we wouldn't kill a child or an elderly person if they wet the bed. Here's a whole bunch of tips to help your cat, and help you, to clean up and prevent recurrence if your feline friend pees somewhere they 'shouldn't': http://www.thecatsite.com/t/9563/inappropriate-peeing-problems-answered
My feelings on this article are so strong I will be forwarding this post as complaint correspondence to The Australian.
Kate shifts guilt away from herself in a similar vein, by calling it her 'brother's philosophy'. And yet it is also hers - she quite clearly says that she would kill her cat if it 'started peeing in (her) closet'. Coupled with the admiration showered upon the girlfriend's wardrobe, and the analysis of pet actions to render them as self seeking rather than loving or concerned, the values in this article privilege material possessions, ease, and not living creatures. Little wonder then that Kate paints her friend as a somewhat loveable, ditzy, soppy woman - with the implicit suggestion that cleaning up after her cat was ridiculous.
There are just SO many problems here (even aside from 'livelihood' being incorrectly used - I think she means 'Bess's life'). Kate's final lines are an attempt at wry humour. Here, she thinks she is hard-done-by because her friend objected to her death-sentence suggestion - AND she is asking for our empathy. She actually assumes and encourages us to sympathise with her values.
Kate, your column was not funny. It promotes the view of animals as material objects. It promotes getting rid of pets if they 'malfunction'. The Australian is no less responsible - as a newspaper, you are surely not allowed to incite animal cruelty, and I would suggest that killing a cat simply because it peed somewhere a human does not like, is certainly cruel. Printing such a view both endorses and promotes this cruelty.
And this view also displays a colossol ignorance of cats. Firstly, the cat in this story was not 'incontinent'. She had perfect control of her bladder. Bess just decided to go in a place the human didn't like. It's actually not uncommon - and you don't cure it by killing the cat.
Most cases of inappropriate elimination occur because the cat is sick. The appropriate course of action is to take them to the vet. The next appropriate course of action is to figure out what the human did wrong- we might have put the litter tray in a noisy scary place, used unpleasant litter, not cleaned the tray, made the tray hard to use with a hood or cover. Or, to debunk another myth Kate espouses, our cat may be picking up on human stress. It is comforting for them to mingle their scent (pee) with the human's they love (think well used place or personal item). From personal experience, I can say that that meant peeing on our bed when my husband was ill with leukaemia.
Cats are smart, intuitive and readily give and receive love. Surely we can love them back when they do things that inconvenience us. Afterall, we wouldn't kill a child or an elderly person if they wet the bed. Here's a whole bunch of tips to help your cat, and help you, to clean up and prevent recurrence if your feline friend pees somewhere they 'shouldn't': http://www.thecatsite.com/t/9563/inappropriate-peeing-problems-answered
My feelings on this article are so strong I will be forwarding this post as complaint correspondence to The Australian.