It seems ages ago now, but the August bank holiday brought many treats this year – it was sunny, I didn’t have to pick up a dead cat from the gutter and a special edition of This Morning aired.
For anyone who has had to recuperate from surgery like me then This Morning becomes a bit of a fixture. If you’re up and dressed before the 10:30am kick-off then it’s a good day. The phone-ins make you realise you’re doing pretty well in life, while Alison Hammond provides great life goals – she’s amazing.
Sadly, This Morning is not on at weekends – or usually bank holidays – so imagine my excitement, not having seen it for a long time, when it was announced a bank holiday episode would be airing and, instead of Eammon and Ruth presenting (sorry, but they’re no Holly and Phillip), it was Rylan Clarke-Neal and Geri Horner (aka Ginger Spice). Be calm my tweeting fingers!
In the end I didn’t watch it – it was sunny and paddle boarding was on the agenda – however, I did note a story that appeared just before the weekend, questioning if Geri would be okay. I was obviously worried, so I read the article.
Not up to scratch
Geri had been scratched by her cat on her face. In her social media posts, it looked quite dramatic.
Apparently her daughter said the cat doesn’t cope well with new people, so I presume a visitor had been in the home. People often don’t realise cats can suffer with similar stress issues to dogs, so it was good it was noted the cat was stressed.
Speaking of dogs, if this injury had been from a dog, how would this have played out? Would Geri have gone public with it? Would it have been a laughing matter and treated in a light-hearted way?
Cause for concern
I understand an attack from a cat may not cause the injuries you could get from a dog, but any attack from an animal is a cause for concern because the animal is stressed enough to attack and an injury has occurred.
Cat attacks can be seen as funny and not something to be worried about, yet dog attacks can attract a level of hysteria that isn’t always necessary. It would appear Geri’s injury was from trying to handle her cat when the cat didn’t want it.
As I write this, a similar story has popped up. A collie has bitten a child while the child tried to cuddle it – another situation of an animal being handled when it didn’t want it. Yet, this dog is now being threatened with euthanasia. There were no calls for this with Geri’s cat – is that because it was a scratch not a bite? Because she was an adult, not a child? Because it was a cat and not a dog?
Behaviour
I suspect there were no calls for euthanasia mainly because it was a cat that attacked Geri. While we are getting better at spotting issues with dog behaviour, we are still lagging behind with cat behaviour. Therefore, we don’t always read these injuries as attacks, signs of stress or aggression.
Where the issue lies with dogs is these attacks are always seen as a sign of aggression, rather than possibly an act of stress. There is then the reaction around what to do about it. The knee-jerk reaction is to euthanise the dog, rather than try to help it with its stresses. Like the collie in the aforementioned story, many dogs don’t appreciate attention they didn’t ask for. It is possible to organise a life for a dog where these situations are limited and managed well.
Euthanasia should not be the first option.
Different rules
It’s scary that a majority of vets have been asked to euthanise a pet for behavioural reasons. From my experience in practice, this can be for reasons as diverse as urinating in the house, to barking, to attacking people or animals – and, in this experience, I have found the range of species presented starts with cats from toileting issues, and then dogs are most heavily represented in the noise/attacks categories. Yet, I’m sure cats are noisy and attack people, too, but this isn’t seen as the same issue as dogs.
Would we ever see breed-specific legislation for cats based on safety for humans? I really don’t think so. I can’t see a campaign by the amazing Shakira Miles and Saveabulls for, say, Persian cats – yet we know they’re pretty fiesty. It seems dogs bear the brunt of our emotion and intolerance when it comes to showing stress through attacks. It’s really not fair.
You’ll be glad to hear Geri healed well and looked fine on This Morning. From her daughter’s comments, they are aware of the cat’s stressors and I hope they will work to reduce them more in the future. If this had been a pet dog, would it have played out the same way?
Leave a Reply