Einstein = manja* cats, too
Compassion toward all animals is the enlightened way to live, he argued
TODAY, Friday • August 15, 2008
Dr Tan Chek Wee
SINCE my involvement in “cat management” in my neighbourhood, — I help trap cats in the estate, send them to the vet for neutering, then release them back into the area, and also help the Town Council to manage complaints — I have begun to empathise with the Town Council officer who has to handle a fair number of unreasonable and demanding complainants.
Recently the officer in charge of my precinct wrote to me about a resident who emailed about the presence of a black cat in the vicinity of her block.
On the Cat Welfare Society’s unofficial blog (catwelfaresg.wordpress.com), an entry dated Aug 4 talks of “a complainant who complained about fleas on her car, about cats scaring kids and pet dogs (which is rarely the case)”.
Unless the complainant’s car has a circulatory system and is covered with skin and hair, there is no reason for fleas to be on it!
I have seen children, sometimes accompanied by their parents, shouting, throwing stones and paper aeroplanes at neighbourhood cats. I could see that the cats were really scared of the kids. I have also seen pet dogs chasing cats, while their owners watch, laughing.
Yet I wonder: Were there no cat “managers” to help counter such complaints, would the cats be rounded up for culling? How many cats have been killed following such unreasonable feedback?
At the end of the day, the issue is not about cats but our lack of graciousness and compassion.
Albert Einstein, in 1930, called our inability to sense how others think and feel “a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us”.
Our task, he continued, “must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”.
Let’s live and let live. I think we will regret it when the day comes when there is just one species left on earth — Homo Sapiens!
Now, isn’t that a scary thought?
The writer is a primary health physician who is also actively involved in the care of the elderly in the community.
