Why are we hurting the cats that need us most?

Imagine a cat sleeping peacefully on one quiet corner by your staircase and the very next moment, someone chases and starts to kick it? Yes, these are the day-to-day life stories of the cats whom you think live a very peaceful life, meowing all day.

The craze about cats of foreign breed is similar to the amount of disgust some feel about strays. In the past, according to stories from my grandmother, they and their friends fondly took care of stray cats, fed them and spent time with them, and considered these stray animals to be their friends.

But recently, the amount of animal cruelty prevalent in our so-called "religious" society is inhumane. Every now and then, there comes an Instagram story which shows a picture of a cat in horrible condition, either beaten or severely injured by other means. You will see people who express their disgust about the litter of stray cats, but then fawning over the wagging tail of a Persian cat.

Photo: Collected / Miom _0326 / Unsplash

The story does not end here. Coming back to what stories loom in our neighbourhoods, I have heard people spreading salt (salt is toxic to cats) on their doormats to prevent cats from coming. Nowadays, people cannot even tolerate a stray cat sitting beside their doors; they start taking a broom or a stick and start chasing after the cat. And the heart-breaking fact is that these cats tend to behave like this is when it needs help — maybe it is pregnant and needs some special care — or maybe it got stranded by its owner and is struggling to find food or any safe shelter.

The most vulnerable of these stray cats are those who are left stranded by their owners

Owners who abandon their cats do not do so on their own. It's either a family pressure, inability to care for the cat, or even because their houseowners or neighbours do not like it. Most of them might have tried through different Facebook groups to give these cats for adoption, but things don't always work out, mostly because people would rather have fancy foreign breeds than adopting cats that desperately need a home.

Photo: Intisab Shahriyar

There are some people who cannot always adopt strays due to personal problems, but still try their best to help them by providing them food and really caring for these cats.

These stray cats when in danger consider your building to be a safe zone, a shelter they can always rely upon, but given the merciless attitude of some people, lives of stray cats are becoming a tough battle for survival. There are many organisations in Bangladesh that work for animal welfare, but the majority of the population still remains ignorant, so progress is hard. We can only hope that the Bangladeshi mindset sees a dramatic change, so we can embrace every animal as something precious.