Hitting a cat on the road is upsetting to the car driver

There are three aspects to a cat being hit by a car on the road, (a) the owner has arguably been irresponsible in letting their cat wander onto roads and (b) the cat is badly injured or killed and suffering great pain and (c) the driver of the vehicle is or should be upset and there is a moral burden on the driver to stop and help. This moral burden might become a legal one in the UK.

Cat on side of road.

The last item is rarely discussed. Hitting a cat on the road is very upsetting to a large section of society. Not everyone will care but millions will and through no fault of their own they find themselves in a very difficult position.

The driver is morally obliged to stop the car, check the cat, take the cat to the nearest veterinarian as a matter of urgency, make sure the cat is scanned for a microchip and make sure the vet contacts the cat's owner if she has one. If not there is the added complication of what to do next. Who pays the vet's bills? Do you authorise euthanasia and so on.

And in Britain 99% of cat owners allow this possibility to come about. They don't seem to recognise the dangers and the burden that it might place on a car driver.

I am not saying that letting a cat wander outside is automatically a bad decision because sometimes the outside is safe for a cat but oftentimes it is not because of heavy road traffic nearby.

Cat owners need to think of others, especially drivers of vehicles, as well as the safety of their cat when they let their cat wander freely outside.