Could you Turn Your Back on a Distressed Animal?
December 16th 2008 21:00
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Picture this: You live in a block of units and your neighbour’s cat stands outside each unit and miaows loudly. The cat moves from door to door until it comes to your door. You like animals so you open the door to find a hungry cat standing there. Encouraged by your welcome, the cat flies into your flat and waits for you to feed it. You open the fridge and find some tuna so you give it to the cat. The cat eats it and happily goes away.
But after this happens a couple of times, you start to feel weary, especially when you work long hours and the last thing you want to come home to is a screaming cat outside your door. What do you do next?
For some reason, my colleague then opened the door. As usual, the cat came flying into his unit with glee. My colleague then lost it and yelled at the cat, “Go away!” The cat ran off and my colleague got into an argument with his girlfriend, who was upset by his behaviour.
When my colleague told me about this, he explained his rationale was not to be cruel but he didn’t want to encourage the cat to keep relying on him and his girlfriend for handouts.
While I can understand his logic, I find it hard to turn my back on animals. When he told me he literally had to shut the door on the cat, I was horrified. In the same situation, I think I would have continued to feed the cat. Given the way I feel for animals, I would have probably ended up adopting the poor thing. Even though my head tells me my colleague did the right thing (he even left a note for his neighbour telling her about her hungry cat), my heart thinks he could have done more. Faced with the same situation, what would you do?
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Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
Still, I know how he feels. We are SO stretched here....Feral mum cat and her four boyfriends hang around every day, and it breaks my heart, I love cats so much, but I chase her off. I tell them, no food. We already feed 8. I never thought Id be able to chase away an animal in need, but Ive found that I can do it, if theres a risk to my babies.
Comment by Queenie
Quirky Folk
Quirky Queenie
I agree. Unfortunately, there is a limit on how much we can do for animals. If we could, we could save the world but as you know, when resources are stretched, that's impossible.