Pets don’t need clothes

Cats love my garden, they treat it as their territory. I don’t really mind except for the odor left by their pooh and other mess they make. I can’t do much about it. These aren’t always strays, they are my neighbour’s pet cats.

People seem to treat their pets like human children. I’ve seen a cat wearing a T-shirt or singlet creeping around the garden, not for the first time. I wondered how the animal actually felt about being dressed up. I saw a dressed cat once try to scratch its back but the T-shirt was in the way and it must have had a really hard time. Poor animal, how it must have suffered! Why? Oh why, did the owner do such a cruel thing to the poor cat? just because you see cartoon animals dressed in clothes, doesn’t mean that your pet is a cartoon character. Your pet cat (or dog) is a living , breathing animal that should be cared for as required by its species, not as a cartoon or inanimate doll to be dressed up and given a change of clothes like children. They have fur to protect them from temperature changes, they don’t need clothes in this hot tropical climate. Cats clean themselves, they don’t need to bathe everyday.

This went on for some time, until one day while trying to clear some debris of plastic bags, paper wraps and leaves that fly into the garden from outside on increasingly strong gusts of wind, I found two mini cat singlets at the base of a bush. Ah ha, I thought, kitty found a way to discard these ridiculous, unnecessary and torturous apparel! Good for you kitty, you’re not as stupid as your owner thinks.

Cats are pretty intelligent creatures. They’re independent, have minds of their own and often seem to make decisions. Some years ago, somebody was cruelly poisoning cats in the neighborhood. Cats were dropping dead in my garden, including female cats with newly born kittens. It was pitiful and downright disgusting. The reaction of the neighborhood cats, including the strays, was interesting. They would not accept any food offered to them, no matter how starved they looked. Now, that was simply amazing! It shows an unsuspected intelligence in cats.

I’ve never discovered who the culprit was but have my suspicions. However, I also discovered that poisoning animals, besides ones considered vermin, is illegal. Well, perhaps the perpetrator of those cat murders also wised up to that and the poisoning stopped. I’m so glad this inhumanity and animal cruelty has stopped but wish human beings would stop treating their pets like human children, that’s a cruel and painful existence for the poor critters.