Imagine you are alone on the street. You have nowhere to go, there is no one waiting for you or worrying about you anywhere in the whole city. You are so hungry that each movement seems to be unmanageable. There are hundreds of people going by, yet you cannot talk to them, they do not even notice you are suffering badly while lying here on a cold pavement, unaided, neglected, exhausted… If animals are able to think and feel which is quite possible, that is probably what numerous homeless dogs and cats you are passing during the day are experiencing. Is it fair though? And do we really have right to close the eyes to the fact of numerous living being suffering and struggling for life completely ignored and abandoned? I believe strongly in humans’ responsibility to protect those who are in need, and I claim that all humans have an ethical obligation to provide help to those who are so much dependent on us, to animals deprived of essential care and love.
These days millions of animals are stray, lost, or in shelters. Statistics of animals being euthanized or chucked out provided by official organizations is dreadful and, unfortunately, the numbers are rising every day. The problem of homeless and displaced animals is a huge one. Shelters today are overloaded. Domestic animals are left on the roadside doomed to take care for themselves. Pet shops and breeders carry on selling animals to the general public without considering the conditions or quality of life animals are put into after leaving the shops’ doors.
Most people enjoy taking care of animals. They even feel some sort of emotional connection with their domestic pets, treating them like rational creatures endowed with emotions, able to realize some facts and to experience sentiments. However, an animal we meet on the street we regard as being a beast, dull and primitive, deprived of any ability to feel. Just take few minutes to realize the dreadfulness of conditions they are doomed to struggle in. What if they actually are able to “think” and “feel”? Just imagine what they are going through.
We all have to finally look around and realize: homeless animals cry out for help, and we have to provide them with necessary aid. Humans should take care of whom they have tamed, since, as one little fox has once said “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” It is up to all of us to turn this world into a nicer place for domestic animals. Making city streets look better by killing off innocent creatures is just a way too cruel to be ignored. So shouldn’t we finally put our humaneness into practice and justify our right to rule the world? I guess we should, and that is our moral obligation
The author is a Delhi-based freelance writer.