HERSELF (the current Mrs Lord) was apoplectic with rage when she saw footage of 45-year-old Mary Bale dumping Lola the cat into that wheelie bin, but then she’s a Leo and identifies strongly with anything feline.
She said the woman should be hunted down and punished for her wanton cruelty. I’m not quite sure just what sort of punishment she had in mind, but, whatever it was, I’m sure it wasn’t quite as extreme as that demanded by some of the loonier bloggers who rushed to their PCs to call for Ms Bale’s head and other parts of her anatomy.
One particularly deranged woman said she should have her hands chopped off, while another claimed that she was worse than Hitler.
Facebook has shut down one page calling for Bale to be killed. She has had death threats from as far away as Australia, which is rich coming from a country where a favourite pastime consists of a number of blokes jumping into the back of a truck with a spotlight and an assortment of guns and going in search of some wild kangaroos to shoot to pieces. But that’s the internet for you.
There are millions of people out there just waiting to be offended by something so they can plaster their discontent all over the web.
Cat-lovers tend to be rather more sensitive than most. Then it becomes a contest to see who can come up with the most severe penalty for the transgressor. It starts with someone demanding that the evildoer should be charged. Then someone else says she should be flogged.
Finally, some other nutter says she should be killed for putting the moggie in the bin. Said nutter then claims game, set and match, having demonstrated that he or she is the biggest cat-lover of them all.
Before Herself and I got spliced I was more of a doggy person, but after 30 years I have grown quite fond of cats. OK, they’re not quite as overtly affectionate as dogs and they are certainly more demanding, but they have a certain dignity about them.
We are on our fourth and fifth cat at the moment and there are times when I could see them far enough, especially at 6am when Bobo, having devoured everything that was left out for her before I went to bed, decides it’s time I got up and ministered to her needs.
Bobo has always been smarter than your average cat. While still less than three months old, she figured out how to open the tumble-drier. She was quite proud of this achievement and would demonstrate her skills to any woman who might visit us. I say woman, because as soon as a strange man enters the house she dives under the nearest duvet and stays there until well after he has left.
She has always had a pathological fear of the male of the human species, but she makes an exception in my case.
She has obviously made a study of the anatomy of the human male and has worked out the most sensitive areas. She started to make use of this knowledge if I showed any reluctance to obey her demands in the wee, small hours of the morning.
She would wait until I rolled over on my back and then she would leap from a great height on to my nether regions.
There’s nothing like a fat cat jumping on your groin to put any thought of further sleep out of your mind.
I have taken to sleeping in the foetal position for the last few years in an effort to protect myself from these vicious assaults on my person.
But this doesn’t stop her from crawling all over my head. I have a stack of cushions within reaching distance which occasionally I throw at her, but she waits until I’ve run out of ammunition then jumps back on the bed and licks any exposed flesh she can find until I give in and stagger off to the kitchen in search of her favourite packaged offal.
And that’s just the beginning of my troubles. Before I can get back to bed she will have gorged every bit of the foul-smelling mess and then brought it back up, all over the hall carpet.
How would you like to have to start every day cleaning that up?
And, of course, she is now even hungrier and ready to go through the whole process again.
Maybe that Bale woman had a point, after all. No, no, I didn’t really mean that. I don’t want to be the next target for those blogging loonies.
Bale said she put the cat in the bin on the spur of the moment, but she can be seen quite clearly looking around to make sure she wasn’t being watched by any passing cat-lovers before she carried out her dastardly deed.
So, not only does she put defenceless animals in bins, but she tells lies as well, and yet we have since learned that Mary is a churchgoing bank worker.
This has surprised many people who suspected she was at the very least a devil-worshipping axe murderess.
Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that she’s a regular visitor to the kirk. Churchy people like to think that humans are the only creatures with souls.
This seems to be a great source of comfort to them.
But Mary could be in big trouble if the Buddhists have it right. There would be a certain amount of justice if she was reincarnated as a big, fat mouse.
By that time, Lola could be on her fourth or fifth life and in a position to seek her own revenge over Mary.
Now that’s what I call karma.