Ne déconnez pas avec les chats

~ iamthesunking

West Ham footballer Kurt Zouma has been cruel to his cat, and everyone in the U.K. is rightly livid about it.

This was bad timing as I had just moved him into my Fantasy Football team for the new game week. There is a video online showing what happened, but I haven’t posted a copy here as I am sure most of us can imagine what it’s like. We don’t need to see it.

For those who may not be familiar with Fantasy Football and its ways, having chosen our team at the start of the season, every week we are allowed to move one player out and one in. I cannot believe that, of the five hundred or so players available, I happened to choose Zouma, just as he did this.

Once you have transferred your one player in, you’re not supposed to transfer them – or anyone – out again until the next game week. If you do, you forfeit four points. But I would rather do that than have an animal abuser in my team, so Zouma is now gone.

Good riddance.

To cheer us up after this awful story, here are some footballers who are nice to their cats (taken from their Twitter pages). I have no idea what the cats’ names are, so I’ve just made them up:

Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) with Babs and Pat.
Aymeric Laporte (Manchester City) with Fermez.
Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City) with Reverend Sparkle-Pops.
Bernd Leno (Arsenal) with Baba Ganoush. Come on, this one looks like a Baba Ganoush, non?

35 thoughts on “Ne déconnez pas avec les chats”

  1. We hate to hear of any kind of animal cruelty. At least this guy is being held responsible. Usually the perp is never caught. Personally, the proper punishment, I feel, is doing to the perpetrator what was done to the victim.
    Good for all the ones loving on their cats.

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    2. To me, especially worrisome are the potentially problematic negative attitudes toward cats openly expressed by news-media commentators, whose recklessly worded views can be influential. For example, when a B.C. (Canada) community newspaper editor wrote a column about courthouse protestors demanding justice in 2014 for a Sarnia, Ontario, cat shot in the head 17 times with a pellet gun, taking out an eye, she rather recklessly declared: “Hey crazy people, it’s [just] a cat.” Apparently she couldn’t relate to the heartfelt motivation behind the public outrage, regardless of it being directed at such senseless cruelty to an innocent animal, and therefore the demonstrators were somehow misguided. Maybe the court also perceived it so, as the charges against the two adult perpetrators were dropped.

      Even the otherwise progressive national commentator Vicky Mochama proclaimed in one of her syndicated columns that “I never liked cats”. In another she wrote that Canadian politicians should replace their traditional unproductively rude heckling with caterwauling: “My vote is for meowing because I don’t like cats and I’d like to sabotage their brand as much as possible. So if our elected politicians are going to be disrespectful in our House of Commons, they might as well channel the animal that holds us all in contempt.” [I search-engined the Internet but found nothing as to the reason(s) behind her publicized anti-feline sentiments. Still, if her motives were expressed, perhaps she’d simply say, “I just don’t like cats.”]

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      1. So far – and I have read A LOT about Zouma on this topic – nobody has said “It’s just a cat”. Everyone is absolutely horrified.

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  2. We had to google “Baba Ganoush” and you and Louis will be amused to learn we were sure he was a person ! Imagine our amusement atfinding the eggplant link,

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      1. Meanwhile, it was reported a few years ago that the city neighboring mine (Surrey, B.C.) had an estimated 36,000 feral cats, very many of which suffer severe malnourishment, debilitating injury and/or infection. Yet, the municipal government, as well as aware yet uncaring residents, did little or nothing to help with the local non-profit Trap/Neuter/Release program, regardless of their documented success in reducing the needlessly great suffering. …

        Again, only when overpopulations of unwanted cats are greatly reduced in number by responsible owners consistently spaying/neutering their pet felines might these beautiful animals’ presence be truly appreciated, especially for the symbiotic-like healthy relationship (contrary to common misinformation) they can and do give us. Pet cats’ qualities, especially their un-humanly innocence, indeed make losing them someday such a heartbreaking experience.

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        1. Reminds me of a book I read in childhood which had the refrain “Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats”.

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          1. And I reiterate: I believe there’s a subconscious yet tragic human-nature propensity to perceive the value of life (sometimes even human life in regularly war-torn or overpopulated famine-stricken global regions) in relation to the conditions enjoyed or suffered by that life. With the mindset of feline disposability, it might be: ‘Oh, there’s a lot more whence they came’. …

            Though likely mostly a subconscious one, such inhuman(e) perception of devaluation somewhat reminds me of a similar external perception of disposability towards the daily human lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations. The worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers. They can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page in the First World’s daily news.

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  5. I utterly ignored Fantasy Football game. Thank you for teaching it to me.
    Our current cat is named Timon after the meerkat from the Lion King. His name was chosen by two grandchildren of ours.

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  7. The story about that idiot football player was even in our news. We get a lot of shocking stories about UK football players lately…

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      1. Belgium, in a village in the countryside close to Antwerp. The story about the WH player (and the Man United goon) was in all the newspapers.

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  9. Well done you my dear, I can’t believe that he gets off with a fine, I don’t care how much money he loses, he should have his football career ended as so many youngsters look up to their footballing heroes and those who like to copy their heroes… Well I can only shudder and feel very sick at what he could have started. I’m a non following football fan, I love watching whenever I get the chance, even if is lads having a kick about on the local pitches, it’s so entertaining and I do hope they find a better way of dealing with this behaviour before it becomes a laughing matter for the cruel cat haters out there. I’ve not seen the video, my daughter said I mustn’t look, I’d like to see a humingousnbrute of a man giving him taste of his own medicine xxx

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    1. I’ve not seen the video, either. But most people have been absolutely appalled. A couple have said stupid things like “It’s awful but let’s move on now”, but absolutely nobody has found it funny as far as I know.

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  10. Cats have a beneficial effect on the human psyche that most people still cannot fathom thus appreciate, a quality that makes losing that pet someday such a heartbreaking experience. Yet, some cat-haters procure sick satisfaction from torturing naively-trusting thus likely sweet-natured cats whose owners have recklessly allowed them to wander the neighborhood at night.

    Many hate cats simply for their innate resistance to heeling at their masters’ commands. Indeed, with their reptile-like vertical-slit pupils and Hollywood-cliché fanged hiss when confronted, in a world mostly hostile toward snakes, cats may have a permanent PR problem, despite their Internet adorable-pet dominance.

    I believe there’s a subconscious yet tragic human-nature propensity to perceive the value of life (sometimes even human life in regularly war-torn or overpopulated famine-stricken global regions) in relation to the conditions enjoyed or suffered by that life. With the mindset of feline disposability, it might be: ‘Oh, there’s a lot more whence they came’.

    Only when overpopulations of unwanted cats are greatly reduced in number by responsible owners consistently spaying/neutering their pet felines might these beautiful animals’ presence be truly appreciated, especially for the symbiotic-like healthy relationship (contrary to common misinformation) they can and do give us.

    Liked by 2 people

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      1. Whether at human hands or preying animals’ teeth, cats have been a popular target of persecution throughout history, especially black cats, which the early Roman Catholic Church demonized and ordered to be slaughtered en masse – until, of course, humane-thinking citizens strongly protested the church’s death warrant on all of those innocent cats.

        ASAP, pet cats should be legislated by respective city halls to be confined indoors when not on a chest-brace leash accompanied by their masters. The cats likely will go through no-more-outdoors-withdrawal and cry a raucous by the front door; however, keeping them safe and around for many years makes their finite whining quite worthwhile.

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  11. The club should have fired him, no matter the cost, yet “We wanted to win the game!” I hope that whatever karma exists pays these heartless louts in kind…I saw the video and read that the coward commited his vicous act in front of a child, yet! That is how children grow up to accept violence. Thank you for showing the players who love their kitties. The names had me lol…

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