Some drivers are complete bastards and don’t even slow down, I saw a poor cat killed like that recently, the driver was going too fast and I am 100% certain saw the cat but didn’t slow down at all. Filth.
1 Like
I have ominous feelings about car drivers and animals on the road. I have seen many hedgehogs lying dead & squashed, but in positions where a car would have had to steer towards them deliberately to leave them squashed where they lay.
While a student some 60 years ago, one of my fellow students took three of us out for a run in the countryside along narrow winding lanes. A large pheasant appeared around a bend, crossing the lane. His immediate reaction was to accelerate, aiming for it. The pheasant took off but glanced off the top of his car and disappeared over a tall hedge. I could only hope that the pheasant was ok, albeit bruised. I was furious and asked why the hell did you do that!!!
A few days later he came to see me and apologised and understood that he’d done wrong. He said he’d learned from my outburst.
At least that was something.
2 Likes
My neighbour had a lovely ginger tom who used to spend more time with me than with them this year. Imagine how I felt when driving out of our estate and finding him dead on the corner and then having to go and tell them at 8am. I was very upset for weeks but after having five at once in the countryside, I would not consider another now with a road front and back, you cannot keep them inside, its not their nature.
1 Like
Yes, every time ours go out I know he might not come back, though he doesn’t stray far and the roads are quite quiet. We’ve always trained him to come back and kept him in overnight.
A friend in the UK lost 2 or 3 cats to traffic. In the end, the RSPCA said she could adopt only an indoor cat, which has worked well for her.
I think that generally a life lived with humans, rather than in a shelter, is better even if you take into account the risks cats face, though I can see that wouldn’t work in your case!
Off topic I know but I’ve just discovered Mark Twain, not that I don’t know of him, but that I have only just started reading him. One of his life lessons applies here.
“Of all animals, Man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”
On a lighter note, one for your chickens….
“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”
4 Likes
You may also like Ambrose Bierce 
1 Like
Having watched cat toy with mice for pure pleasure before eventually dining on the poor little creature I don’t agree with Mark Twain.
3 Likes
No do I, though I did like Huck Fynn and Tom Sawyer, my lovely gentle Beauceron, Jules, will pick up a downed bird and shake it till it is dead. I am almost certain that it isn’t a mercy killing on his part. Whenever there is a loud bang on the door window beside me, I rush out double quick to get to the poor little bird before he does. Without his intervention, 90% of them eventually recover and fly away.
1 Like
I don’t think cats have theory of mind, that’s the difference: they don’t think the creature they are practising their killing skills on and playing with is sentient and just like them at all. It isn’t cruelty, except in our eyes, because we do have TOM.
4 Likes
I refused to have a bird table or put out food for birds when I had all the cats, it would have been an open invitation to dine out plus the neighbour had three on one side, in front had a couple and there were others about. There was always enough grain spilt in the fields and near agricultural buildings to keep the local birds fed and don’t start me on seagulls which always seemed to mass overhead due to the sea so close and then s**t on my washing as if to say take that you nasty human.
1 Like
Whether they believe it or not, it is still cruel.
They are animals 
2 Likes
That’s why I lose my cats here. F***ing townies come to live in the country since covid (was much rarer to lose them on the road before covid) thinking countryside is about a nice view from their window.
When being in the country, for anyone sentient and not just concerned with themselves, is about respecting the environment and looking out for animals - small ones and not just cats, and big ones such as horses or sheep that may have escaped their enclosures or lost dogs.
Rant over.
3 Likes
Would you marry that guy?
These things are clues.
Sorry but it isn’t ‘cruel’ because that’s a human description of how some humans behave, Cruelty is a concept that is solely to do with human morality (and possibly some great apes) but as Vero has already indicated it’s nothing to do with the cat world. You can perceive it as cruel, but obviously the cat doesn’t operate in the realm of human morality so it’s not cruel, it only appears cruel to humans
4 Likes
Of course, he might have further reasons for not wishing to marry the driver!
Several times in S Africa, I’ve seen drivers usually in bakkies (dual cab pick-up trucks) swerve to run over puff adders, which are dangerous (they can kill a large dog and often do) but are not an endangered species. Conversely I often stopped to pick up tortoises (an illegal act) that were recklessly crawling across local roads
3 Likes
Never crossed my mind, being irreversibly attracted towards the female of the species. 
I only remember him because (1) he had a car, a 1960s Ford Anglia (with inward sloping rear window) and (2) he understood why I was outraged by his attempt to kill a wild creature for fun, and he learned from it.
He understood & learned from it as a late teenager, as I was, which was a saving grace IMO when I look back. There was a maturity in his response.
Precisely!
Cats are what they are – predators of small mammals and birds. A fact that can’t be denied.
Cheetah mothers will catch baby deer and bring them back alive for their young to learn how to kill. I find it horrific, that a baby deer will be slowly mauled to death by inexperienced young cheetahs.
But that’s how nature works.
Sorry but it isn’t ‘cruel’ because that’s a human description of how some humans behave, Cruelty is a concept that is a solely to do with human morality (and possibly some great apes) but as Vero has already indicated it’s nothing to do with the cat world. You can perceive it as cruel, but obviously the cat doesn’t operate in the realm of human morality cat so it’s not cruel, it only appears cruel to humans
Sorry, but it is, because I am a human and I speak English and this is the Oxford definition of the word ‘cruel’ in my native language. Whether that cat knows what it is doing or not makes no difference, that is an accurate description of what it is doing.
wilfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it.