It's bad enough that our culture has been coarsened by militarization, official torture and all the rest. But for even a mediocre publication like the Huffington Post to have a series of videos of cats jumping and missing - cat pratfalls, as it were -- is disgusting.
Seriously people, the cat shown on the main page goes to jump in quite a tall cardboard box. It misses the center of the box and hits the back edge, causing the empty box to fall over. The cat takes the fall on its front paws, flips over, and smacks hard on its back on a hardwood floor.
hahahahahahaha, isn't that funny?
Well, no. I think that fall hurt. No, the cat didn't seem to be injured and almost certainly didn't require treatment.
Still, I was appalled and didn't watch the rest of the video. And I was even more appalled that out of the 68 comments, I saw only two that showed any kind of empathy at all. Isn't that sad?
I left feedback for HuffPost. I can't say I'm surprised that the editors left them up, as the editorial work on the site is generally poor -- as evidenced by the uninformative headlines the site uses to get readers to click-through, instead of actually serving their readers. Editors who don't take pride in solid work probably can't be expected to take the time to look at and monitor the content that is probably fed via some kind of feed to fill the page.
I believe these videos are beyond the pale and should never have been put on the site in the first place. For one thing, one of the comments noted that some of the videos appeared to be "directed" by the human owners coaching the pooties. (As I said, I would not watch this material, beyond the looped shot on the front page that motivated me to read the comments.)
If you love cats (and other animals), please contact HP and ask them to take these cruel and cruelty-applauding videos down. HP needs to know that they have made a mistake and to guard against this kind of celebration of mistreatment.
Thank you for caring.