Get a grip on yourself. Then, get over yourself.
That, basically, is why it’s good public policy to make anyone caught abusing animals think Jupiter fell on him.
There are two restrictions that keep a person from becoming a predatory biped animal:
- Ingrained personal values, and
- Fear of punishment
Animal abuse is a 99.999% reliable diagnostic indicator that Restriction #1 has completely fallen apart. Obviously, this requires corresponding reinforcement of Restriction #2.
My personal impulse, to quote the Dark Knight, is that there’s nothing wrong with this guy I can’t fix… with my hands.
Social policy can’t be based on pure emotionalism, of course, but I outlined a rational public policy reason for severe punishment of such crimes in my previous message.
Nah, let’s just kill him now. :dubious:
No, let’s just repeatedly toss the offending teenagers off a five story building. And film it with a cellphone. Just repeat the process they did with the cat, only use them in place of the cat.
I can relate . My usual first response is violence but I’m getting too old for that shit.
And the people tossing the kids should be wearing catsuits.
That’s a horrible story.
But I think, at least with young kids doing things like this, there is that boys-will-be-boys curiosity about the “cats always land on their feet” myth that they just HAVE to explore. My brother did it too, at about age 8 with my cat. Him and a friend stood on the couch, turned the cat onto his back and dropped him. The cat did, in fact, land on his feet (my brother later told me they also tested it from about 2 feet up - the cat didn’t have time to turn). I caught them doing this, and yelled at them (I would have been about 6) and ran to my parents and both boys were punished. My brother has since told me that he still feels bad for having done it, but did find the results of their “research” pretty cool. He told me he loved watching how the cat would twist in the air to land safely. Of course, this is only from 6-7 feet off the ground - not 6-7 stories!
I’m not justifying the behaviour. It’s horrible and cruel, and people who engage in such things do need to be punished. Kids need to be taught at very young ages that animals are not to be treated like that, and hopefully, that myth can be laid to rest so that the temptation to test it out will maybe disappear too.
As for teenagers who ought to know better, and taking pleasure in the acts of violence against these poor kids… well, they deserve what they dished out. Do teenagers always land on their feet, I wonder?
In the case of my brother, watching the poor kitty die and the knowing he was the one that killed it was punishment enough. That’s why he never did it again.
I’m guessing that** Lute’s **brother is doing OK now. How about you dial back the absolutism a bit?
Heard on the radio that he read out a letter saying how sorry he was. Like THAT’S gonna get him out of a jail term. And 4 months? Fucking pathetic.
I wonder who wrote the letter for him? And then persuaded him to fake being sorry for what he’d done, not just for getting caught?
No, I don’t believe anyone who’d do something like that would feel genuine remorse.
Yeah, he’s a pretty well-adjusted 56-year-old. It’s my other brother who’s the asshole.
Why do you say this, about the Burberry hat? Was he a chav? It wouldn’t be a bad thing if a bunch of cats dropped a bunch of chavs off some tall buildings, innit?
So your brother isn’t a psychopath who enjoyed it, which is good. He didn’t do it again because it made him feel awful, not because he ran out of cats.
I guess I don’t hate him, but I really do hate people who abuse animals on purpose.
Yeah. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
I suppose a link to the kitty cannon game would be in bad taste, wouldn’t it?
Oh, it would?
Too late.
I recall seeing something about profiling serial killers and that it’s not uncommon for them to have done some sort of thrill killing of animals when they were younger, so maybe this isn’t so far fetched.
Not the killing him now, but the foreshadowing.
“Good Lord - I’ve heard about this - Cat Juggling! Stop! Stop! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Good God! Father, could there be a God that would let this happen?”