Editor, The Times:
This International Cat Day (August 8) should focus on the bleak situation allowed to continue for feral and stray cats, essentially due to human apathy.
For example, in neighbouring Surrey, there are tens of thousands of these beautiful sentient animals, so many of which are allowed to suffer severe malnourishment, debilitating injury and/or infection by callously neglectful municipal governments, as well as individual residents who choose to remain silent. (Progress might also be made by discontinuing allowing pet cats to roam freely outdoors and notably risk them becoming another predator’s meal or some sadistic person’s target for a torturous death.)
When I made a monetary donation to the local Trap/Neuter/Release (TNR) program, a lady volunteer left me a tearful voice mail expressing her appreciation, which to me suggested a scarcity of caring financial donors. No wonder cat TNR programs are typically underfunded by governments and private donors, regardless of their documented success in reducing needless suffering.
I fear a possible presumption of feline disposability. Could there be a subconscious human perception that the worth of such animal life (if not even human life in regularly war-torn or overpopulated famine-stricken global regions) is reflected by its overabundance and the protracted conditions under which it suffers?
Frank Sterle Jr.,
White Rock, B.C.