Judge: You have been charged with First Degree Kittenphilia. Several witnesses claim they saw you approaching kittens and acting suspiciously… they’re KITTENS! How do you answer to these charges?
🧐
To be fair, cats are big on consent, and they make it clear when they do or do not want to be petted
There’s a cat usually lazing about one alleyway I walk down almost every day. One day recently, it suddenly jumped up as I passed and apparently decided it’s time to demand a toll in scritches. Blocked my way, craned its neck into my hand, accepted a few seconds of petting, then firmly and thoroughly headrubbed my legs and trotted away back to down and continue and guarding the passage.
If anything, it failed to ask for my consent.
Cata are an experiment on consent, which explains why some people I know are constantly getting attacked
On a tangent,
what’s your stance on various people on YT ‘domesticating’ feral cats and other semi-wild and wild animals by wearing heavy gloves, then repeatedly invading their personal space over a course of days (like a month, typically) and then triumphantly showing that the animal is much-less stressed, and much-less freaked-out by petting, at the end of the video?I mean, I guess I’m pretty much answering my own question above. I.e. I don’t like it in general, but it does leave some Q’s about what exactly those people are doing in such cases… like, what’s being triggered… what’s being normalized… and all that stuff. It almost kinda seems like a form of slavery and Stockholm syndrome, altho I’m just an amateur speaking.
It’s the equivalent of grooming. So yes, it is morally questionable. But so is every “training someone to do a thing”. People just accept it with animals as long as in the end the animal seems fine, because it’s only ever about what seems normal and not about the actual impact. And I’m not saying it’s all a horrible moral crime, just that it’s a large grayscale and can’t be painted as good or bad blankly.
Doing that to random wild animals for no reason does feel rather fucked up to me because until the end point (which in that case is likely just the realization that there’s no danger) it puts the animal under a lot of stress. Not to mention the potential issues with wild animals losing their fear of humans.
There is a little kitty that hangs out outside my apartment building all the time and petting her is considered to be the entrance tax. If you don’t then she remembers you and will fuck you up if you try to pet her after ignoring her too many times, but she will still approach you the exact same way as if she wants pets from you before she guts you like a fish. I’ve never had issues, as I always pay my vig, but I’ve seen that tiny lady straight open some people up. She’s got autonomous machetes for hands.
Uhhh… So I bribed a stray to bring her new litter over, trapped them all in my basement, got them familiar to humans for a few months, built a huge 6’ by 10’ kennel in our living room, and kept them locked away for a few more months. They just turned 1 in March.
Guess I’m a total monster. But they are great cats.
Edit: Don’t tell the judge I had them spayed/neutered!
I hope you typed that you had them spayed/neutered and autocorrect screwed it up
Haha YES! Darn autocorrect!
your honor she was rubbing her whole body all over me!
I mean lots of old ladies think it’s perfectly fine to touch other people’s children, tousle their hair, etc. and idk that I necessarily disagree. It’s not something I’d ever do, but aside from making some awkward kids potentially a little uncomfortable it’s not hurting anyone. Intent matters a lot, and if someone was having sexual intentions towards kittens I damn well hope people would stop them.
It’s important to teach children boundaries so that they’re equipped to deal with sexual assault. You teach kids the concept of consent and how to say “No!” and you ask them to tell you if an adult touches them in a way they don’t like. You also make sure they know the names of all the parts of their body.
Then if their uncle or teacher molests them, they’re equipped for the situation. They say no, and afterwards they tell a trusted adult what happened.
Old ladies who don’t respect personal space erode that training. They teach kids that your agency and boundaries don’t matter, that adults know best and it’s no big deal to feel uncomfortable for a few minutes. That might be harmless when it’s their hair, but that lesson helps predators get away scot free, when it’s a child’s genitals or chest. Because kids don’t know the difference between those two things.
Also, you shouldn’t pet any cat without their consent. Pay attention to the tail. Let the cat approach you first.
Bend down, talk softly to the kitty, ask it if you may pet it, reach your hand towards it, and if the god aka kitty has deemed you worthy you may pet its divine self.
If that’s the case, the idea “your cat shouldn’t be outside” and “my cat is outside cat” will both get you fined and your cat taken away.
Also “get your cat on leash” would be a very strange thing to say.
Lol. My mom didn’t give me permission to be outside by myself until like 6th grade when she finally signed the permission papers to let me walk home from school by myself. (6th grade is still considered Elementary school where I live, still required parents to pick up as a standard protocol)
Cuz she was afraid of (a) kidnappings and (b) that someone would report it and then “CPS would come and take me away and I’d never see mom again”
That was like when I was 12 years old… whats that in Cat Years?
Oh the “hold your child’s (read: cat) hands (read: paws) when crossing the street” is gonna get a bit weird… (you’re gonna get scratched by “your child” (aka: cat))
Yikes. I was walking myself home from school in first grade. They are overprotective where you are
Context:
8 years old was when my family immigrated to the US… probably also the factor of being in a foreign place…
Not sure if there any any immigrant parents that would just lets their kids roam free without supervision…
could also be an age factor. about a decade younger than me they started picking up and dropping off all the kids from school. the kids wouldn’t (and still won’t, it’s ridiculous) bicycle home from school. i bother my brothers that they need to give their kids more free rein like we had growing up and they say I don’t understand and in truth I don’t, but my sister’s doing it fine so pthbt to them.
i mean, back when i was in school one child would die in some public way each year. in the entire city (size: lower six figures population. for the california bay area that’s just a small city/large town. in retrospect i think our mortality rate was pretty good and that was just the deaths i knew about, which was most of them what with those religious/social-climbing type of parents and a town still small enough if you didn’t directly know everyone with some effort you could indirectly know about a good fifth of the town (at my most famous i had probably 25k fans? okay twenty five thousand people who had heard of me)) they would make a huge deal of it every time anything ever happened, as though it was their first time dealing with death. like shit, i was worried that i, as an 8-year-old, had dealt with more death on the farm than the principal had (who was understandably shaken by the stray dog who had darted in front of a teacher’s car in the parking lot, i was too i will not describe the gore but fuck lady i was keeping it together better i felt like i needed to come up and give her a hug). only here’s the thing, only like one out of six that i recall was a vehicular death. but i think it scarred my generation enough that they didn’t want their kids walking to school by the busy roads the way we did.
