Wednesday, April 3, 2013

C is for Cat Neglect

I have a soft spot for cats, which is a lucky thing for at least one cat that isn’t even chewing on my feet right now. He is remiss in his responsibilities.

At least he helped me make the bed this morning.

I’ve been volunteering with a local cat rescue for the past few months, which has been a refresher course on how stupid some people are. One girl, after watching a cat roll around on the floor of its cage for a few minutes, insisted that the cat was obviously crippled and could not walk. She had me trying to coax the cat to stand up for like five minutes, a mission that was doomed to failure from the moment the cat sensed I was trying to get it to do something. She left still convinced that the cat wasn’t standing up because it couldn’t stand up, and giving me the side-eye like I was some kind of dodgy used car salesman trying to fob off defective cats on an unwary public.

Mwahaha.

It’s always pissed me off when people neglect their cats. I’m pretty sure most people who aren’t sociopaths get pissed off when people straight up torture cats, or drop them into garbage bins like that one sad excuse for a British human did. I mean, that’s somebody’s pet, you know? It could be some little girl’s pet, or some old lady who hasn’t a soul in the world’s pet.

I’d kick your ass if I caught you mistreating a cat. I’d be pretty upset if I found out you were one of those butt nuts who moves house and leaves the poor cat behind. “Well, cats can take care of themselves,” you say, as if that were some kind of excuse. I hope someday you go on vacation and your spouse leaves you sitting at a rest stop in the desert so you know how it feels. You can take care of yourself, right?

You shouldn’t be putting your cat outside anyway. You might as well put it in the oven. There are cars, dogs, rednecks with guns, hawks and cat-torturing kids and middle-aged ladies out there just waiting to get their hands on Muffins and put him in a world of pain.

Even if your cold, black, selfish heart doesn’t care about any of that, do it for the greater good, because today you have the chance to be a better person, loser. Did you know that domestic cats kill up to 3.7 BILLION birds and up to 20.7 BILLION mammals every year, in the United States alone? And that domestic cats are implicated in the extinction of 33 native bird species worldwide? Keep your cat indoors! For the birds! Because we’re all in this together and some of us like birds, and I will kick you right in your bung hole!

Yeah!

Image credit: Heather Katsoulis

While you’re at it, get your cat neutered, if it isn’t already, because we don’t need more of them. We’re full up on cats already. Not getting your cat neutered makes the Baby Jesus cry. Take your cat to the freakin’ vet when it gets sick. It’s not like it can take itself. How’d you like it if every time you got sick, the brutish giant who controls your life just shrugged and muttered something about how the kids’ll be sad if you die. Oh wait, that’s the American health care system. But seriously, don’t let your sick cat suffer.

Also, if I find out that you have declawed your cat, you’re planning to declaw your cat, or you’re one of those people who think declawing is a necessary part of cat ownership, then there is a 99.999% chance I will think you are a subhuman monster. I’m leaving that 0.001% window open because you never know, maaaaybe you managed to come up with a legitimate reason to declaw your cat, and I will do you the courtesy of not kicking your ass until I’ve heard you out. But, for the most part, I’ve found that people declaw their cats because they’re scratching the furniture, and I think if you’re so concerned about your furniture that you’re going to chop a cat’s toes off over it, just don’t have the cat.

Or sit on the floor, with the rest of the vermin.