Hurting Cats Fearing Cats. What has this picture (copyright wander.lust) got to do with that? Two things for me. One it portrays a feeling of impending doom warranting fear, which is in tune with this post. Two it is a damn good photograph.
Hurting cats and fearing cats is not that unusual. Why do some people hurt cats? Or go even further and kill cats or are cruel to cats?
A lovely saying (I have it forgotten verbatim) which I can remember the gist of comes to mind.
It comes from the philosophy of Native Americans, who occupied North America before Europeans arrived in the 1590s. In simple terms they said that what we fear we kill.
If you water this down a little it is so true. If we are frightened of something we are liable to become defensive towards that person or the situation. Defensiveness turns to aggression. Isn't this the classic fight or fright response? We either run from frightening things or we fight them. Aggression can so easily lead to killing or if not killing then something unpleasant.
I am convinced that a lot of the cat's ills are due to a fear of cats. Fearing cats is a very common condition. Mankind is generally fearful anyway. A lot of what we do is based on an underlying fear. We are all scared.
Cats are designed to a be killing machine and even the humble domestic cat has some pretty fearful weapons. Cats are obligate (they must) carnivores. They need to eat meat. They need to kill animals to get meat.
In fearing cats many people are defensive towards cats. They behave incorrectly towards the cat. A cat is instinctive and reactive and will respond in a way that the human finds undesirable as a consequence. The problem then has commenced with the human's inappropriate behavior. We generally have created many of the problems concerning the domestic cat.
On this theory, it must be the case that Chinese and Koreans (and it seems people from other Far Eastern Countries) either fear or have a distrust of the domestic cat. This may be why some people from these countries treat the domestic cat so appallingly. Of course people from the West also are able to treat cats badly but not to the same extent.
A recent comment to a post I made some time ago reinforces this. The visitor said that she thought cats were aloof. She preferred dogs. She thought cats should be stir fried. I thought cats should either run a mile from her or be aggressive towards her to defend themselves.
So is the Chinese cat meat trade based on this cycle. Human is fearful of domestic cat. Human behaves badly towards cat. Cat reacts defensively. Human kills cat. Human eats cat?
What we are frightened of we kill. Hurting Cats, Fearing Cats go hand in hand.
Hurting Cats Fearing Cats to Cat Meat Name and Shame
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