Help, I'm a cat!

I woke up Friday morning and signed in immediately into my work laptop only to be greeted with messages from my friend that she’d called a couple of people up in Japan as well as her friend in Italy. Of course the significance of these calls was lost on me as I enquired if it was her “long distance calls” day. It took only a few minutes, as I signed in to see what was going on in the land of Facebook, to realise that something had occurred in Japan (from the very astute status message “2011, stop trying to be 2012. First it was New Zealand, now it’s Japan”) and I read in horror about the earthquake and consequent tsunami on the BBC website.

Five days on I’m still reeling at how much of a disaster there has been out there. I’ve also found myself thinking about New Zealand, Australia, China and other countries where there have been so many natural disasters and countless deaths as well as displacements. I think about the orphans and the homeless people. I was even quite upset when I heard about the heart wrenching news of dogs waiting patiently outside houses for their humans.

This morning there was an email thanking us for expressing interest as a company in helping colleagues out in Japan. Yesterday I got an email asking for donation of my Hilton Honours points to help families in Japan. All the news channels are trying to outdo themselves in painting the grimmest picture of the situation out there. Thus I was quite amused when in the middle of all this information about real human disaster, an appeal to save “big cats” came onto my TV screen.

I love dogs, am indifferent to cats, like other pets from a distance, am not crazy about the zoo, don't wear fur and certainly don't go hunting. I eat meat and usually look upon vegetarians with disdain. I went into a mild panic when I was out in India and didn’t eat any meat for nearly three days. Let’s just say that while I am not a fan of torturing animals or treating them badly, I think that this is really not a great time to save a tiger or jaguar.