EVERYDAY, while my human family cooks breakfast, I royally sit and groom myself on the newspaper lying on the table. It is one of my favourite pastimes. The other day as I glanced at the newspaper, pictures of some cats looked back at me. The news report said that some 600 cats had been rescued in the Putuo district of China from a man who was trying to transport them in small crates piled on his truck to sell them for fur and meat.

I was shocked. I sat up, the fur on my back standing in spikes and my tail becoming thick and furry in anger and fear. Let me read this again. Hmm … when the truck was parked at a roadside, it was spotted by residents of that area. Who was this man? Where had the cats come from? Where were they taken? I read some more.

This horrible man must have stolen many pet cats, and picked up some strays and lost cats or bought them from another hideous man like himself, and was taking them to an illegal buyer somewhere. Another nasty character was going to buy these cats and kill them to sell the meat and fur away.

There are many people in this world who are involved in the cruel and illegal business of stealing, buying and selling animals. They are kept in terrible conditions and then bought or sold for meat and fur.

If I thought any more about what these people do to cats after they kill them, probably eat them or put the meat in human and pet food without saying that is cat meat — I would end up puking my breakfast and that would so upset my human.

But I couldn’t help thinking about the poor cats were stuffed together like sardines in a tin. On that truck were 32 crates in all and each had about 19 cats crammed together. They looked most unhappy and were probably in bad health. When the police caught that man after people spotted him and made a noise about it, some cat rescue organisations took away some crates to give some cats up for adoption while others would be taken to cat-friendly compounds.

After reading this sad story, I needed a drink of water and decided to snooze a bit as I felt shaken up. Knowing us cats, we don’t like to feel that way — just like we don’t like to be stolen from where we belong, we don’t like to be crammed into crates and loaded on to trucks. If we weren’t already feeling sick, we would certainly start feeling that way after a ride like that.

I heard my human talking about it later to a friend as I got up from my nap. They both looked quite concerned and upset. They were discussing how cruelty is done to animals who can’t even protest and speak a language that humans do not understand. They can’t tell their stories of how badly they were treated, starved or left to suffer sickness.

All of us feathered, finned and furry creatures must be respected and treated with kindness and dignity. “Shut up”, “I hate cats” and “Stupid dogs” are really ‘uncool’ things to say to someone who can’t even reply back to you. Animals are gift to humans, so enjoy them.