KZN's catastrophic kitty killings

2005-06-01 08:25

What is it with these Durbanites and cats? One microwaved, one strangled - will the trail of blood never end? I guess we should have realised that a bunch of people who all have little shark stickers on the back of their cars would be bloodthirsty killers.

Tourist authorities are going to have to add another category to those tourist crime alerts they hand out. If you're a human being, avoid Cape Town streets at night time, and Johannesburg all the time. But if you're a cat, stay the hell out of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

I don't want to make light of the deaths of Tango and Peanut. Tango was microwaved to death by university students taking a break from the usual university pastimes of raping, vomiting and plagiarising. Peanut was strangled and tossed into the garden at the Bluff yacht club in Durban.

It's truly horrible stuff, but there are going to be those people - misguided liberals and dog-lovers, for example - who are going to point out the usual South African paradox.

Which is, some of us show a lot more concern for a cat than we do for actual human beings, who are getting slaughtered in equally horrible ways all over South Africa.

I don't think that's a fair comment. The fact that people can still summon up the ethical courage to feel sorry for abused animals, despite the horrendous amount of violence they're confronted with on a daily basis, is an amazing thing.

Of course, this is premised on the fact that they also feel sorry for human beings, which I sometimes doubt in some cases.

Cats are killers

Personally, I don't like cats. Cats are killers. If cats could operate a microwave, they'd be microwaving live birds every night, and then pretending that the poor dogs were responsible.

Cats kill millions of birds a year, and that cute bell you put around Fluffy's neck might just as well be a dinner bell, for all the good it does.

But just as I don't believe in the death penalty for human killers, I certainly don't believe in the death penalty for bird killers.

I'd love to see the bastard caught who microwaved Tango, but unlike some over-eager cat lovers, I don't think we should punish him by microwaving him.

Firstly, unless the killer is an extremely small dwarf, it's going to be tricky finding a microwave big enough.

And secondly, the kind of person who wants to kill a man who has been cruel to animals, is the kind of person who has the potential to also become a killer.

Oh, I know the philosophy. A Thai for a Thai, as the cat-lovers' bible says. But it's a little extreme.

Speaking of Thais - it's instructive to see the different ways that people think about cats. The Thailand Travel website insists that "there is nothing wrong with eating cats, snakes, and bird's nests; most probably these foods are even nutritious; it's just the idea of it that cannot convince Westerners to enrich their diet with these delicacies. Especially cats, being considered pets, receive in Western tradition sympathy to a degree that is never afforded less cute animals such as pigs or chickens." Can't argue with that, I guess.

And according to www.messybeast.com (don't go there!), that popular Cantonese recipe "Tiger Fights Dragon" consists of a roast snake entwined around a roast cat. However, unlike our local cat cook (Nigella Clawson?), Cantonese cooks kill the cats before they cook them. I think that makes a difference.

Chris Roper is allergic to cats, but doesn't really hate them. He just says that to avoid falling in love with one, and then dying of a sneezing fit.

Send your comments to Chris or discuss this column now in our debating forum.

See Chris's previous columns on his blog The World.

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