What the hell is going on? First, we have the case in Liberty, Mo. (referenced in several other Pit threads) in which a man is charged with torturing a kitten on a barbecue grill. Today, we hear of a soldier – A soldier! In the U.S. Army! – accused of . . . torturing a cat on a barbecue grill.
Is it something in the goddamned air? Is this the latest craze among sadists and sociopaths from coast to coast? Enough. Enough of this bullshit. Just enough.
I don’t imagine this will cheer you up, Phil, but in fact there seems to be a long history of cat-torturing as a traditional “mild” form of hooliganism in this country. Check out the reference in Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
There’s even an 18th-century Mother Goose rhyme about cat-torturing: “Ding dong bell, The cat is in the well. Who put her in? Little Johnny Green. What a naughty boy was that, To drown poor Pussy cat. Who never did any harm, And kill’d the mice in his father’s barn.”
Nothing new, in short: domestic cats, ubiquitous and with little financial value, have been a favorite toy of human cruelty for a long time. Doesn’t make it any less reprehensible and disgusting, of course, but it’s not surprising. (The barbecue-grill motif, on the other hand, is probably a relatively new idea, and the current spate of media attention it’s getting will probably generate a lot of, you should excuse the expression, copycat crimes. Yuck.)
Check out The Great Cat Massacre:And Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton. Highly recommended ( and yes, the title does refer to a literal event, with the mass slaughter of cats being considered a great bit of satire and source of hilarity in the 1730-something Paris ).
Once, when I was still in elementary school, I was reading a book from the library about the care of cats, thier history with humans, and so on. I got to one description of cat tortures in Europe in the Middle Ages. I started crying so hard my mom asked what the problem was and all I could do was point at the book. I couldn’t eat supper, just went to my room.(Only time I ever remember being so upset that I was put off my food). So it’s not new, but that doesn’t make it less awful.