Timothy, an "extremely stressed-out" orange tabby, was rescued from the frozen highway but died later.
Yes, someone or some ones (any idea re the demographic?) glued a 7-month-old tabby cat (whom the rescuers called Timothy) to a highway a half hour west of Mankato, Minnesota a week before Christmas. A passing motorist spotted the cat and got help, but Timothy, “extremely stressed-out,” died despite veterinary treatment by Second Chance Rescue Center in Sioux Falls, SD.
We wonder, of course, who could have done such a thing. What perversities of human nature were engaged by the sight of such a small, defenseless, powerless creature facing death. What grotesqueries of humor were evoked by the idea of gluing a living animal to a highway. If this isn’t an image of powerlessness and helplessness — a scene begging rescue, as in the old melodramas, where Dudley Dooright rescues the maiden on the railroad tracks — I don’t know what is.
Yet this is no silly melodrama. No case of right overcoming wrong.
The cat glued to the highway, immobilized — poised to be rescued or, more likely, run over. A passing motorist, a good Samaritan, sees the little beast, stops, takes it to a shelter, but it’s too late for effectual rescue.
We picture ourselves lying there in the same helpless position. We think of Prometheus (absurdly, I know) bound to a rock in the Caucasus. But this is no hero, pecked by vultures sent by the gods. Nor is it Jesus, suffering for our sins. It’s a tabby, just seven months old, maybe a stray, who knows, without its tabby family or a decent human one. Someone wants to dispense with it, this bit of fluff, this nothing protoplasm. And so, in glee, in company with others of the same mind, if we can call it mind, takes it out to the frozen stretch of highway and glues the struggling animal to the pavement.
No, it’s not Prometheus. It’s not Christ. It’s not a holy martyr of any kind. Yet it is a sacrifice to good sense, kindness, reason, humanity, qualities we evidently more and more seem to be able to do without these days.
Ex-Hollywood actor Ken Wahl, now an animal rights activist, has contributed to a reward fund to find the perp(s), citing the possibility of another budding Jeffrey Dahmer on the loose. Sure, and we start with torturing animals, then graduate to powerless humans. If they’re not already powerless, we knock them out with drugs, we drag them into our den, we slice them up, we suck their blood.
Or we do something about it. We keep our eyes open. We watch for perversions of our better nature, and we dissect them. We think about it. We do something about it. We take a time-out and meditate depravity.
