Respecting life
Every night at around ten, a
neatly-dressed petite woman in her fifties would come to the small park at
Eastbourne Road to perform an act of great charity – feeding a family of three yellow
cats!
This gentle lady brings along
with her a picnic basket complete with a big cardboard or sometimes a plastic
sheet, plates, cans of cat food, bottles of water and tissue paper. The feline trio
would sit there quietly on the bench waiting for her to open the cans, dish out
the food and water before they jump down to enjoy their dinner. Then the lady
would take a walk nearby before she returns to collect the plates and clean up
the places.
After bumping into her and
watching her daily routines several times, I started chatting with her. From
our brief conversations, I come to know that she is a Korean housewife who has
come to settle in Hong Kong because her banker husband was transferred here from
the headquarters in Seoul about a decade ago. Her Cantonese is limited and I
don’t speak Korean. She doesn’t speak English. But we are still able to understand
each other. She pointed out to me which one of the three is the mother and that
the other two of similar sizes are her kittens. She went on to say that last month
when the kittens were six months old, she had taken all three to a vet for neutering.
The operations cost her about five thousand dollars.
The above is an eye-witness
account of kindness to animals taking them as living beings to be respected and
loved in ways that we can. There are many such good people in our city caring,
sheltering or campaigning for animals. But on the other hand, every now and
then, we hear news reports of gruesome animal abuse cases.
Animals kill for food. We human
beings are killing for fun! We have to end this! Our police has to start
treating dogs and cats as living things and conduct criminal investigations into
animal abuse cases.
The message is clear - zero
tolerance for animal abuse!
