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You could also have thrown in the internet which allowed everyone to view this random act of cruelty. I suppose if people could picket the homes of the Taliban they would do that to but the most important thing is that people care about cruelty and unpleasantness. If you go back just 100 years such cruelty would have been unremarkable.I think people are well able to be aware of different types of unpleasantness throughout the world without losing their sense of proportion.Moral panic over.

With the Afghanistan and Iraq examples above I can understand why these atrocities occur: war is war. I am not sure with the deaths of the 72 immigrants in Mexico, but I presume they were working for a rival drugs cartel. With "cat woman" I am intrigued by her motive: the act looked calculated and her gain was psychological.

It is interesting to read that no criminal offence has been committed. Had the cat died would this have made a difference? Has Mary Bale done this sort of thing before? If Bale is not prosecuted I fear that it sends out the wrong message to potential abusers of animals.

#2

Not sure if it's for a criminal offence, but a text message informs me that the woman will be prosecuted for using a bin of the wrong colour.

>8-D

I do worse things to animals, I eat them.

How extraordinary that once again such ignorance of homeopathy was voiced on this morning's programme. The so called placebo effect is a complete red herring. Homeopathy works on animals and young children just as effectively as on adults. Forget about placebo effects. Homeopathy works because it works. It really is standing intelligent reasoning on its head to say that science does not yet know why homeopathy works, therefore it does not work! Duh!

Was it an act of mindless cruelty or has she done this before? How would people react if this had been a baby or toddler....where does she draw the line? I think her mental state needs to be evaluated...this was not an act of a sane person and I hope she does receive the maximum prison sentence. Lucky for her that it was not one of my animals that she abused as I would not have waited for the Police or R.S.P.C.A to question her, and I admire the self control of Lola's owners in this matter.

I am sure the women knew that the colour of the bin was "green" for glass. There could have been dozens of shards of glass in the bottom, but did she care, no. This is a case of cruelty, not just putting it in a bin.

Perhaps she thought it was cat litter.

'Do we care too much, or not nearly enough?'

Both. our relationship with animals we keep as pets is bizarre in the extreme. This is primarily true of the US and UK - having lived in Germany I think they have a much more mature, intelligent attitude.

On the one hand we care enough about pets to get outraged by this woman's actions, to spend huge amounts of money on extravagant pet accessories, and even larger sums of money on veterinary treatment. On the other hand many pet owners don't care enough about their pets to feed them properly (hence the epidemic of obese animals) or to spend time with them (hence things like dog walking services), or to train them properly (hence the number of animals with serious psychological and behavioural problems).

Add to this the obsession with 'breed' dogs - often suffering from psychological and physical diseases as a result of inbreeding - and the consequent dismissal of 'cross breeds' or mutts which together consign millions of healthy animals to death (4 millions cats and dogs a year in the US according the Humane Society) and its clear that our relationship with these animals is utterly dysfunctional.

In Munich where I lived for two years dogs were allowed to be dogs and were not treated as proxies for children. They were socialised with people and other dogs and properly trained. In two years I saw two dogs that could have been considered overweight. Because they were properly socialised and trained dogs came everywhere their owners went - public transport, shops, restaurants and cafes. My adopted Albanian street dog flourished in that environment in a way she never would in the UK or US.

Those people who gathered to protest outside this woman's door would have been more convincing if they had protested by going to their local animal shelter and adopting an abandoned animal.