It is cruel not to feed your cats with regularity. They expect it, and
need it; and, if they do not get it, what else can you expect but that
your cat will become a thief?
What is called "wandering" cats is extremely cruel. A man has no
further use for his cat, so he "wanders" her. I assure you it would be
far more humane to drown her at once. How would you, yourself, like to
be wandered--to be taken abroad somewhere, and placed down in the centre
of savages; hungry and cold, and longing and pining for the home you
left behind you; and in danger every moment of being cruelly slain?
Don't you think that speedy dissolution were more to be desired than
such a life?
It is cruel, when your cat has kittens, to permit more to live than you
can find decent homes for. It is a shame to a poor little kit, after it
has opened its eyes to the wonders all around it, and begun to get happy
and funny. Always keep one or two kittens for sake of the mother, and
try, if possible, to find some one to take them. But the worst form of
unintentional cruelty is that of leaving your poor favourite at home,
when you go to the seaside, or to summer quarters. Often and often, on
the return of the family, the unhappy cat is found lying in the empty
hall, dead or dying, and wasted away to a mere handful of bones and
skin--this in itself testifying to the sufferings she must have
undergone for the want of food and water. Such gross _carelessness
ought to be made penal_. I do not know whether the Society has ever yet
prosecuted anyone for thus cruelly starving a cat, but I should think it
would have little difficulty in obtaining a conviction.
I come now to mention some cases of intentional and specific cruelty,
and shall be as brief as possible.
Some men, both young and old, think that a cat is a fit subject for
torture and cruelty of all kinds; hence they never miss the chance of
shying a stone after pussy's retreating figure. Cases, too, are
continually cropping up in the police courts, of men having tortured
cats to the death with dogs.
Cat skins are considered of some value by the furriers. At a sale not
long since in London, there were some three thousand cat skins. Where
think you, reader, do these come from? That is a question unfortunately
only too easily answered. In almost all large cities there exists a
gang of ruffians--you cannot call them by a milder name--who eke out a
sort of livelihood by stealing cats by every available means and method.
But worse than this remains to be told; it is darkly whispered, and I
have some reason to believe it may be but too true, that many of those
poor cats are _skinned alive_, in the belief that the living skin thus
procured retains the gloss.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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