Animal Cruelty

Animal abuse is an EXTREMELY important topic, and also an extremely overlooked one. Many people think it’s ok to hurt animals and it’s absolutely disgusting. After hearing about a video of a cat being put in a blender on tiktok earlier this week, I knew what my next article would be about. As a quick disclaimer PLEASE do not look for this video and watch it, i’ve seen the video and it is absolutely horrifying and you will seriously regret it.

Recently, I saw a cat video on my tiktok for you page, and the comments were all about a cat in a blender. Confused, I searched up “cat blender” on tiktok and found videos talking about it. In the video, a kitten was put inside a blender and blended alive.The kitten was meowing and crying, drenched in its own blood and covered in cuts from the blades. There are many different variations of the story from this point on, but the one I’ve seen the most is that the kitten didn’t die, and was put in a microwave, where it did die. This is an absolutely cruel and disgusting thing to do, and a lot of people didn’t care or thought it was funny, so for this article, I will be talking about animal cruelty and how absolutely horrible and disgusting it is. 

More than 10 million, MILLION animals are abused every year- in the United States ALONE. Animal abuse accounts for 28% of all violent crimes, and every single minute one animal suffers from abuse. 50 MILLION animal deaths due to abuse have occurred since 1990. This is an extremely serious topic that needs more light shed on it. 

Animal abuse occurs in many different ways, one of the most common, and most commonly overlooked forms of animal abuse is neglect. Neglect can occur in many ways, such as not scooping your cat’s litter box, not feeding and watering your dog, or providing too small a tank for a favorite reptile. Zoos commonly contribute to animal abuse by chronically stressing them out and hiring people who care for them inadequately. People who hoard often cause severe abuse to their animals, usually unintentionally as well. 

Many studies have been conducted over the years, and the data reveals that people who abuse animals are more likely to progress to physically harming people, however, the opposite is also true in 16% of cases. Additionally, people who are abused by others are likely to abuse animals, often to feel they have some control over their life.

Animal abuse is often used as a tactic to keep people in abusive and toxic relationships. Abusers will often threaten the animals safety in order to manipulate and control the victim. The abuser will kill or hurt the animal in order to keep the victim isolated and keep them in the violent relationship. They may also hurt the animal in order to remind the victim that they can hurt them, to punish them, and to maintain dominance and control. Over 75% of abused women with pets claimed their abuser threatened the safety of their pets or hurt them. In many cases animals are injured or end up being killed.

Puppy mills are facilities that tend to specialize in certain breeds, and force dogs to breed until they’re no longer capable of having puppies. These puppy mill puppies are often sold to other breeders, neglected, or killed. Puppies born in puppy mills are kept in cages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in unsanitary conditions, with little to no interaction with people or the outside world. Additionally puppies in mills don’t have proper medical care, and if they are sick they are killed or left to die. Puppy mill puppies also commonly have birth defects. Despite these factors they are given USDA licenses. 

Factory farms are another form of animal abuse. Large numbers of animals are shoved into tiny cages where they can barely move. It is most common with pigs and chickens. They are shoved into these tiny cages to save costs for producing things such as eggs and meat and still make a lot of money. 

There’s so many other forms of animal abuse that I don’t have time to cover in this article, such as dogfighting, cockfighting, and zoophilia just to name a few. If you are abusing your animal, whether it be intentional or unintentional, please stop. And please, if you see anybody abusing an animal, don’t turn a blind eye, find a way to help the animal, whether it be calling local animal control services or even 9-1-1, just be careful about stepping in to stop it yourself if it is intentional abuse, because violent acts towards animals often means the abuser will become violent towards humans.