Story here. :(:mad:
Excerpt: **"A truck containing three tons of live cats crammed into bamboo crates was impounded last Tuesday in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, with police initially undecided how to deal with the animals.
“But on Wednesday a police officer told AFP they had been buried in accordance with Vietnamese law on smuggled goods.”**
Sheesh! This is extreme even for Vietnam.
Why did I even read this post? I’m totally not going to click on the link. I think I’ll just cuddle my cats and cry for humanity.
Sad, but I’ver met cat haters who would probably stand up and applaud Vietnam for doing this.
I hope they all get rabies.
Someone needs to do their math: 3 tons of cats != “thousands of cats”. Even a skinny cat weighs at least six pounds, which means there’s a thousand cats here at most.
As awful as burying a thousand live cats is, I wonder what other options were really available. If you’re in charge, what do you do with a truckload of a thousand sickly cats? You’re not Bill Gates, your a Hanoi police chief; you don’t have the budget to quickly buy a thousand lethal doses of pentobarbitol, and you don’t have the veterinary resources to humanely cage/feed/treat a thousand animals. Shoot them? It’s easy to shoot a cow, but a cat isn’t going to just stand there in a field while you draw a bead on it.
So how do you humanely dispatch a thousand cats on a limited budget?
From the article: “Animal protection groups, who pleaded in vain for the cats to be spared, fear many of the creatures were alive when they were buried.”
Why weren’t animal rights groups asked for assistance?
If a law calls for burying smuggled goods…the enforcers should still differentiate between live goods and not-alive goods. Letter of the law vs. spirit of the law.
To do what with? I’m no fan of burying cats alive, either, but really, we don’t need 1000 more cats released into the world. There is no shortage of cats.
I’m never sure what people want us to do with every unwanted animal out there. We can’t save all of them. Instead, we should be much more in favor of spaying and neutering all of our pets, and making that be the focus of our attentions, both here and internationally.
To euthanize them before burying them. Being buried alive in a pile of your fellow creatures is an exceptionally shitty way to go.
Spay/neuter is very unpopular in many countries and cultures. There is a thought that it is “against nature”. I think it’s hugely ironic that castration is against nature but killing animals in horrendous ways like this, or letting them roam the streets spreading disease and breeding and dying of starvation is “with nature”.
It’s an education matter. The really difficult challenge is that the education they need usually is in opposition to cultural traditions and beliefs.
What a dick! Don’t you think they have enough problems as it is being buried alive?!
Yet this same country allowed Gary Glitter to leave alive. Seriously skewed priorities.
These cats were slated to be eaten, so it isn’t a pet overpopulation problem in this case.
“Hey Joe, wake up! We’re being rescued!”
“Let me die in peace, you sick sonofabitch.”
“No, I’m serious! It’s a rescue! Look!”
“I don’t believe it… God answered our prayers!* The nightmare is over!*”
Gas, probably.
:eek: Oh, the waste . . . oh, the curry . . . oh, the pho . . . sniff 
Smuggled goods get buried? I’d be concerned that there was a typo in the story, and that he actually said they were “burned.”
chews on his bacon cheeseburger
Those savage, savage people!
Apparently there is a shortage in Vietnam, necessitating importing cats from China. I guess “little tiger” is the cat’s meow in Hanoi.
I’ve said it before…