Of cats, more cats and human suffering in less known places



There is something about cats that makes a lot of us just want to pet them, on the streets, in our neighbour's corridor, or even the one we encounter on our way to campus near that stinking pile of garbage. With their cuteness overload these feline creatures have fought their way to human heart, thanks to their massive presence on youtube. I am not here to blame cats for most of Earthlings sheer ignorance and lack of knowledge  on  whats happening around the World. You see, cats are adorable, they make us laugh foolishly and share with our virtual friends these videos that their "owners" post online  (PS. Just like we don't own humans, no one should own cats either ;-). 

I know it will be impossible to stop cat lovers from sharing all these cute videos with the rest of the World, and I am for sure will be looking forward to more of it, it is an addiction. Just like we find kittens extremely adorable, even though some of them are ridiculously unattractive (Grumpy cat), why can my fellow earth dwellers not find  human suffering disturbing? or is it because we have so much space for cuteness and none for empathy?. How can we not be enraged by whats going in the DRC, Afghanistan, Central African Republic? are we overloaded with emotions that can only respond to something cute, rather than something disturbing/sad/wrong? Do we need to photoshop cats into ethnic cleansing and rape reports to make people respond? 

Cats of course are not the problem nor are they going to be solution to the on going crisis in the less known places like the DRC, but human beings are. Somehow, a problem becomes threatening and sad if it is happening within our town, city, and country, and less sad if it is happening thousands of kilometres away from us. We have created a geographical limit of places where we connect with humanity, we care less because we chose not to, because "we are not familiar with place where this atrocities are happening", because our "media are not covering them", and instead we chose to know that there is a cat somewhere in the US that is just grumpy and one that can play piano. Is this happening because the World has become such a bad place that we take massive killings as a norm? or we have became emotionally non-receptive to human sufferings beyond our artificial national boundaries, a form of negative evolution. 

Well, as rebels continue to pillage, burn, rape and kill in the DRC to gain control over coltan deposits in the eastern provinces of Kivu so that they can illegally sell it to Multi national companies that will eventually sell them to electronic manufacturers to produce mobile phones, ipads, and laptops and sell them around the World, I bet more cat videos will be uploaded in the process, or worse, Justin Bieber's video!

Cats are adorable, I mean all kind of cats, Big cats, and domestic cats alike, If only we could with the same passion care about a woman who was raped, house burnt down, shunned by her community, and a starving child somewhere in a third World country the same way we do about our favourite cat video, the World would be a better place, definitely better than Mars, there is no cat on Mars, that's why, well unless there exist a mutant cat or its alternative that Mars rover's camera failed to capture!

Just as you go for your weekly or daily dose of cat videos, depending on your level of addiction, be more than a cat lover, be human, reclaim your humanity, read or listen to stories about what your fellow Earth dwellers are going through, connect with your fellow human beings, share with your friends, who knows you might be the one who will help change the course of their lives, by helping raise awareness and promote understanding, and above all peace. And as you do this, don't forget that there are a lot of animals out there that are tortured around you, care for wounded ones as well, they are all beautiful, valuable, and above all only native to our planet so far, I just don't know how many monkeys Iran has genetically engineered and catapulted into space!
Location: Baku, Azerbaijan

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