Jay Leno likes cats and lives with a black-and-white moggy

For the record, as some people want to know, Jay Leno likes cats and he lives with a black-and-white moggy, which I'm going to suggest he adopted from a cat rescue centre but I might be wrong on that. I get a strong sense that he would do the right thing and adopt from a rescue centre. This is the because he is essentially a decent person. In any case, anybody who likes cats is going to be a decent person! As you almost certainly know he also likes cars. He likes cars and cats a lot, the both.

Jay Leno and his cat. Screenshot from YouTube video.

He may live with more than one cat but I have seen him with his black-and-white moggy in a YouTube video from The Ellen Show in which he discusses cats and particularly whether cats are smarter than dogs. He believes that they are but it was tongue in cheek.

Over a period of time, Jay Leno made nine jokes about Asians eating cat and dog meat. He regrets doing that now. He thought he was doing no harm at the time. I have not heard these jokes. The fact is, though, that a lot of people in the West dislike Asians eating cat and dog meat.

What grates is that there is an unwritten contract both with cats and dogs as companion animals. It was written at the moment they were first domesticated. Cats were domesticated about 10,000 years ago it is believed (and maybe earlier) while dogs were first domesticated perhaps about 20,000 years ago. 

We don't know exactly. At that moment we agreed with cats that we would look after them and in return they would kill mice and rodents, be companions and occasionally entertain us. The functional aspect of keeping a cat has disappeared and now their role is to entertain us and be our companions.

Dogs were originally domesticated as working animals and they still are in very many areas of the world. But they also entertain and keep us company. The contract is that they do X and we do Y. It does not include killing them and eating them. That is why it is immoral and wrong.

It isn't just that it is a breach of this unwritten contract, the whole process is ghastly because they are transported in a very cruel manner. They are killed in a very cruel manner. There is no regulation on how they are killed. It is, to be frank and honest, a nightmare for the animals. It is surprising that it still happens in the 21st century.

Sorry to have gone on so long about it. It came to my mind because Jay Leno has apologised for his jokes publicly, which is fair enough. Perhaps he was being a bit nasty but the motivation was genuine. What I mean is that he loves cats and probably dogs and finds eating them objectionable and I guess he wanted to criticise the habit in a joke. It is a good way of getting a message across.