Accidental animal crueltyI once invented a brilliant game - I'd sit at the top of the stairs and throw cat biscuits to the bottom. My cat would eat them, then I'd shake the box, and he would run up the stairs for more biscuits. Then - of course - I'd throw a biscuit back down to the bottom. I kept this going for about half an hour, amused at my little game, and all was fine until the cat vomited. I felt absolutely dreadful.
Have you accidentally been cruel to an animal?
This question has been revived from way, way, way back on the b3ta messageboard when it was all fields round here.
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rob, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 11:13)
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A menace to guppy kindWhen I was about nine years old, after badgering my parents endlessly for a pet of some sort, I was finally allowed a little bowl filled with guppies. A bowl! Guppies! In my own room! I was, of course, extremely grown up, and fed them, changed their water and decorated their bowl with gusto.
One day, after adding a few extra features, pebbles and the like, I noticed that one of the fish was missing. It wasn't hiding in the pondweed. It wasn't behind a rock. I checked all around and it certainly hadn't jumped out of the bowl.
A mystery. I put it from my mind and turned my attention to the remaining fish.
That is until two weeks later, when I went to clean out the bowl. I overturned a large, brand-new shell that I'd put in there as a gift from the seaside, and up floated the rigid, staring corpse of the missing guppy. When I dropped the shell into the bowl, I'd trapped it in the hollow, leaving it to die, trapped in its watery grave.
Did it die of starvation or drowning? I'll never know. What I do know, however, is that my scream echoed throughout the house. And I don't keep fish anymore.
(, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 15:44, 1 reply)
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