Cruelty, outrage and the cat/bin lady
Dumping a cat into a bin is a cruel thing to do. I don't think I'm swimming against the tide with that one. Whatever you think of cats - and I quite like them, despite my own pet mammal being a horrible, aggressive little bastard who constantly attempts to rip my hands off - it's not nice to dump any animal in a bin. Even a crap cat deserves not to be stuck in a bin, let alone a relatively friendly one.
It's strange how some stories grip the public imagination more than others, though. In the case of the cat/bin lady, it's because we could all see her dumping the cat into the bin via embedded videos - and there's also the casual manner in which it was done, and the very ordinariness of her appearance. As well as that, there was a relatively happy ending - the somewhat traumatised moggy survived in the end, and didn't get crushed along with the rest of the rubbish. So, it's wobbling towards being an 'and finally' rather than a disturbing story of brutality.
Cruelty to animals, of course, happens all the time, but there's not always a video of the incident for us to see to confirm what happened. Had the cat simply been found in the bin by its owner, it may have made the local paper, but wouldn't have spread as far as it did. That's just the way these things work. It's why photos of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse were far more powerful than simply people recounting it: we could see for ourselves that it really happened; we need pictures rather than just words, a lot of the time, to entertain us as well as to inform us.
Take this story for example - a dog chucked in a rucksack with a brick and left to drown. Awful. But there is no CCTV footage of the dog being put in the bag (and no happy ending either - this animal's really dead, and probably suffered horribly), so it's not as big a story. It's just ordinary, everyday cruelty. The sort of thing that goes on, maybe never gets solved, maybe ends with someone in the magistrates' court getting a community sentence or whatever, and that's that.
A lot of people have attempted to answer the question why the cat was put into the bin in the first place. Plenty of armchair experts (myself included) have wondered if the person who put the cat in the bin was just having a bad day, or if there were longer-term problems. As Helen pointed out, assumptions about mental illness can be too simplistic, and plain offensive to those of us who do have mental health issues. If someone does something that's particularly outside of social norms, or unpleasant even, or downright cruel and nasty, that doesn't necessarily make them 'mad'; assuming they are is an attempt to try and rationalise the situation in people's minds, I understand that of course, and to 'think the best', and there's nothing malicious in that. But 'normal' people are quite capable of cruelty, unpleasantness, crime and violence towards animals and people; it's not just we who have for one reason or other got something 'wrong' with us who do that kind of thing.
We won't know, and maybe there is nothing to know. It's all very well for ITV to trumpet the fact they 'confronted' the person at the heart of the story, but it's not going to explain away the inexplicable. Sometimes very ordinary people do extraordinary things - extraordinarily unpleasant, as well as extraordinarily good. We're all capable of it, from time to time, I'm afraid. I know I am.
And yes, I know people need to get a sense of perspective. Yes, there are indeed floods in Pakistan, and rape attacks in Congo, and all kinds of horrors in the world, affecting people as well as domestic animals. That is all indeed true. But it doesn't mean that newspapers, websites or anything like that must exclusively deal in hard news, or be forever doomed to a world of candyfloss and trivia. And it doesn't mean you can't be upset by the thought of someone sticking a cat in a bin. You can. You can, and you can keep the rest in perspective as well. People being upset or annoyed by a bit of animal cruelty doesn't mean that people aren't upset by other horrors.
It's strange what makes us outraged and what doesn't, and where it all comes from. Take the story of the woman who 'desecrated' a war memorial by having a drunken piss on it and then giving someone a handjob nearby. In these times of Help for Heroes and mawkish grief-parades through Wootton Bassett, war memorials are more totem poles than ever before, I suppose - but again, it's just a low-level offence, the likes of which happen all over the country all the time.
I'm not saying it's right, but it's just odd that some get picked up more than others - and some perpetrators get singled out more than others. Men piss in public all the time, against war memorials, on gravestones and everywhere, yet here's a woman doing it - and let's not forget it does take two people to create the kind of 'sex act' that apparently 'desecrated' the memory of the fallen. I can't help wondering if the sex of the miscreant, in this story and in the cat/bin story, might have a little something to do with it. I guess we won't know for sure.
Some stories just attract more interest than others. They happen at a time when not much else is going on, or they create a perfect storm of button-pushing; they get picked up as evidence of 'broken Britain' by politicians or just as an example of just how awful people can be. People are cruel to animals, or take a piss in public, all the time. It's a grim reality, but it's a reality. Every now and then, one of these stories garners a bit more interest than it might otherwise have done.
The people who do it are responsible for their own actions, of course, and should face whatever punishment the law would ordinarily bring about; but I don't think they deserve angry mobs or to be made an example of. Because for every one of them, there are a lot more people doing it and getting away with it, or not getting vilified in public if they do get caught out.
To which you might add, well why are you writing about this then? Doesn't it just add to the chatter? And it does, I suppose. So I'd better stop.
Related posts:
Switch site
About Me
Donate
Recent Posts
- Want to see something really scary?
- THAT CANNOT BE A COW
- More on the War on Christmas
- Farewell Prozac, one year on
- The Pope must die! Oh, wait a minute…
Most Commented On
Recent Comments
- While the Pope takes the attention, the US deals with the ‘enemy’. « Watching With George on Who’s leading the War on Christmas?
- the_voice_of_reason on Want to see something really scary?
- Em on More on the War on Christmas
- Miranda Fox on Want to see something really scary?
- Smogo on THAT CANNOT BE A COW
Blogroll
- A Very Public Sociologist
- Akela's Diary
- Andy Worthington
- Anna Raccoon
- Bleeding Heart Show
- Bloggerheads
- Bristol Evening Post Watch
- Buff The Banana With Paul Dacre
- Chicken Yoghurt
- Crooked Timber
- Daily Quail
- David Neiwert
- Discoriggall
- Eric the Fish
- Felix Farley's Bristol Journal
- Five Chinese Crackers
- Greenman's Occasional
- If you like it so much…
- Jacinthsong
- Jimbo Grumbles
- Last Year's Girl
- Left Wing Criminologist
- Lenin's Tomb
- Liberal Conspiracy
- Loonwatch
- Ministry of Truth
- My thoughts on…
- Never Trust A Hippy
- News Corpse
- Newshounds
- Obsolete
- Our Man in Newcastle
- Paperhouse
- Pickled Poltiics
- Pigdogfucker
- Ponderboxes
- Popular Front for the Liberation of Discordia
- Punkscience
- Rhetorically Speaking
- Sadie's Tavern
- Stumbling and Mumbling
- Tabloid Watch
- Tampon Teabag
- The Bleeding Heart Show
- The Cynical Dragon
- The Daily (Maybe)
- The Last Strawman
- The Sharpener
- The Sun Lies
- Tory Troll
- Tygerland
- Why That's Delightful
- Yorksher Gob
- Yorkshire Ranter
Writers
- George Monbiot
- Johann Hari
- John Pilger
- Michael Moore
- Naomi Klein
- Nick Davies
- Noam Chomsky
- Oliver James
- Paul Foot
- Richard Dawkins
- Robert Fisk
- Salman Rushdie
Media and Miscellany
- 257 show
- B3ta
- Bad Science
- Churner Prize
- Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
- James Randi Educational Foundation
- Mailwatch
- Media Lens
- Photoshop Disasters
- Skeptical Science
- The Daily Mail Really Are A Bunch Of Fucking Twats
- The Flying Fiasco Brothers
August 25th, 2010 - 15:29
This story, the war memorial BJ story (I’m taking a wild guess it was a BJ anyway) and others have been a rather uncomfortable peek at what lies beneath the surface in this country…a festering undercurrent of potential vigiliantism fuelled by the redtops and the faux broadsheets and the perception they stoke that the police are now so totally out of the game that it’s time for the baying C2DE hordes to take matters into their own hands. And it’s pretty fucking scary.
August 25th, 2010 - 20:49
The most shameful part of that coverage was the Mail and Express’s glowing coverage of war veterans insulting a woman for doing something that, while being stupid and disrespectful, wasn’t especially harmful to anyone. The Express in particular used the very ambiguous term “heroes” to describe them. Yes, presumably they were war heroes, but the headline “Heroes jeer woman who defiled war memorial“, like you say, really appeals to that vigilante undercurrent.
August 25th, 2010 - 16:02
You’d be surprised what ‘normal’ people will do when they think their actions will have no consequences, as was undoubtedly the case here. Unfortunately, the baying mob (my father included) are once again rearing their ugly heads and demanding that ‘proper justice’ be meted out.
Never one to disappoint, the Mail managed to get it’s ‘principles’ in a twist by raging about the cat lady whilst bemoaning NuLiebore’s ‘silly’ laws preventing goldfish (living creatures last time I checked) being given to children as prizes.
Incidentally, as a seasoned pro, do you have any advice for a new blogger trying to get his fledgling blog out of the traps?
Cheers
August 25th, 2010 - 16:41
A seasoned pro?! Haha! More a hopeless amateur, but that’s how I like it. Just write about what you want to write about, don’t feel compelled to write when you don’t feel completely happy with it just to get something put down, and enjoy it.
August 26th, 2010 - 19:07
The Edgar Davids of Blogging Anton?
Monkey would look great with a pair of Edgar-specs.
August 26th, 2010 - 20:50
Say what you like about Davids, he clearly has exceptional taste in football teams. Monkey is probably a Norwich City fan or something, just to annoy me. Monkeys are like that.
August 25th, 2010 - 18:18
I notice the Mail’s headline describes the cat-bin woman as a “woman bank worker”, which strikes me as kind of odd. They wouldn’t have said “man bank worker”, would they? I also seem to recall a male student who was photographed having a piss on a war memorial not so long ago, and while there was some low-level media/facebook outrage I don’t think it was on this sort of scale. So maybe you’re onto something with the gender thing.
August 29th, 2010 - 15:43
Coverage of the student urinating on a Sheffield War Memorial was far bigger than the coverage meted out to the Blackpool Scutter.
August 30th, 2010 - 04:26
Yeah, definitely.
August 26th, 2010 - 12:29
Yesterday the Toady programme wanted an outraged posh-o spokesdroid roundly to condemn the whole cat-binning episode. But why on earth pick someone who has made a lucrative career from writing novels about upper-class huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ twits, viz. Jilly Cooper? Was Sir David Attenborough having a lie-in? Is Stephen Fry too ubiquitous? I’d have chosen Michael Winner, who I understand is shortly to start work on “Death Wish 2011″; Jean-Claude van Damme dispenses summary justice to people who put cats in wheelie bins.
August 26th, 2010 - 15:28
Putting a cat in a bin is cruel, because it is a living intelligent animal.
Lining up cows and shooting them through the head in front of each other with metal bolts is fine, though. That’s for food, not for some sort of needless satisfaction. Except we can get food from other places, which makes the slaughter of animals a luxury choice rather than a necessity.
Never understood how it all works. Why is fur really bad but leather OK? Why is fox hunting bad but sausages are acceptable? Why are cats and dogs great but pigs can fuck off?
August 26th, 2010 - 20:30
In answer to Merrick:
Come on, it’s not that hard to understand.
In our society being unnecessarily and sadistically cruel to an animal just for the fun of it is usually considered to be wrong (even if the animal is going to be killed anyway). That covers anything from dumping cats in bins to fox hunting. We’re an intelligent species, and should know better.
Killing animals for food is a different matter altogether. We’re omnivores, so eating meat is natural for us, we evolved that way. I absolutely respect the decision that vegetarians and vegans make not to eat meat, in fact I think one day in the distant future we’ll all be vegan, but equally I think meat eaters have a right to go with their (okay, our) nature, on the condition that we do everything we can do to give the animals a decent life and as swift, stress-free and humane a death as possible (as it happens I think we should do more here than we currently do, but that’s another story).
I do agree though that there is a certain amount of inconsistency in this area. I think it’s largely based on things like sentimentality and tradition; people get very squeamish about eating or wearing fluffy cute animals, or ones which are more usually seen as our companions, but aren’t so bothered about creatures that are less easy to coo over or befriend.
I suppose this comes down to nature as well. When we see an animal as cute, that’s supposedly because it reminds us of our own young, so of course we’re more reluctant to slice it open. And it’s only natural that we don’t like eating species which we’re taught to see as our kin, when we have the option of eating ones which we’re born and raised to think of more as food.
We also seem to be more happy with treating prey animals as a usable commodity, as opposed to predators. My guess is that we prefer it this way because, again, it seems to fit in better with the natural order of things. In the wild, deer, rabbits etc are ‘meant’ to be eaten, while felines and canines aren’t.
The statement “cats and dogs are great but pigs can fuck off” rather misses the point. A more accurate statement might be “We’d rather kill and eat/wear an animal which is traditionally considered as livestock or prey and doesn’t remind us of our own babies, rather than one which we generally see as a companion or as a fellow predator, or is kinda cute”. It might not be particularly fair, but I think it’s understandable.
In either case, no decent person wants to see any animal mistreated, be it predator or prey, friend or finger food. I for one would be just as unhappy to see a pig being abused as a cat or a dog, and I’m fairly sure I’m not alone there.