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Okay: first, let me say I'm a fan of cats. Allergic, and no longer able to keep a cat in the house, but a fan. And like everyone else who's heard the story, I am appalled by the casual, sick cruelty of two 15-year old girls torching a kitten. A caged feral 8-week-old kitten on its way to be neutered. And I'm touched by the extent to which the Bay area community has rallied to help the kitten, who survived and, a month later, has had two skin grafts already and will need a couple more.
But as the article in today's Chronicle points out, the medical treatment is likely to run around $30,000; then there's the $10,000 reward that was offered for finding the girls who torched the kitty. That's $40,000, a lot of sympathy and a lot of anger. Understandably, some people in the apartment complex wonder why there was this upwelling of compassion for a kitten, when a year before there was less outrage and less compassion when a 16-year-old neighborhood boy was killed. And there's the matter of what $40,000 could do for the families who live in that housing complex. The two girls who burned the kitten clearly have problems--more problems than simple poverty would explain. I'm glad Adam, the kitten, is getting help and love; it isn't that. I'm just troubled by the it-ain't-that-simple nature of the story.
But as the article in today's Chronicle points out, the medical treatment is likely to run around $30,000; then there's the $10,000 reward that was offered for finding the girls who torched the kitty. That's $40,000, a lot of sympathy and a lot of anger. Understandably, some people in the apartment complex wonder why there was this upwelling of compassion for a kitten, when a year before there was less outrage and less compassion when a 16-year-old neighborhood boy was killed. And there's the matter of what $40,000 could do for the families who live in that housing complex. The two girls who burned the kitten clearly have problems--more problems than simple poverty would explain. I'm glad Adam, the kitten, is getting help and love; it isn't that. I'm just troubled by the it-ain't-that-simple nature of the story.