Cruelty to Animals
Essay # 1
Animals are dumb creatures-. They cannot plead or argue. They act according to their instincts. They deserve our sympathy and love. It will be very cruel if they are not properly looked after. The Bible says, “A righteous man regarded the life of his beast”, thus making kindness and justice to domestic animals an essential part of human virtue. The man, who starves his horse, beats his dog, or unmercifully overloads his ass or camel is a brute and a bully.
St. Francis of Assisi considered all living creatures as his brothers and sisters. His passionate love of them is famous. Isaac Newton loved pets greatly. When his dog Diamond destroyed the papers containing his discoveries for twenty years, he patted him on the head with his usual kindness. An ordinary person would have killed the dog, Blake and W.H. Hudson loved animals and birds greatly. Blake writes:
A captive Redbreast in a cage
Sets all Heaven in a rage
A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
Among the animals that are domesticated, the dog has a special place. No other animal shows as much love and gratitude as the dog. Our friends may not stand by us in our adversity, but the dog will remain with his master at all times. “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you,” says Mark Twain. “That is the principal difference between a dog and a man.” In Wordsworth’s poem Fidelity, we read about a dog that remained for three months near the dead body of its master, who had died as a result of his fall from a cliff. In Jack London’s Call of the Wild we come across a dog called Buck that saves his master from drowning. Dogs are used to detect crimes. They draw sledges, tend sheep and watch houses.
In the West, cruel treatment of animals is a crime. The Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) are very active there. These societies do good work in bringing to book those brutes that ill-treat animals.
The pets in families are properly taken care of. In the USA, on average, people spend $125 on a dog and $75 on meat a month. They are members of the families. No cruelty inflicted on them is tolerated there.
While the German Air Force was bombing England during the Second World War, Englishmen were busy taking their injured dogs to veterinary hospitals. In 1988, a dog was operated on in Hamburg (Germany) and a pace-maker was inserted in its body. The owner of the dog had to spend a good amount of money on this. A few years ago an English writer pointed out the necessity of removing the idiom ‘lead a dog’s life from the English language since the dogs in the West are living a comfortable life. The solicitude of the people there for the welfare of dogs and cats is very great.
In our country, animals are very .cruelly treated. They are thrashed. Nor are they properly fed. Gandhiji said, “By every act of cruelty to our cattle we disown God and Hinduism. I do not know’ that the condition of the cattle in any part of the world is so bad as in unhappy India. Criminal negligence is the only cause of the miserable condition of our cattle.” Some people put birds like parrots in cages and feed. They think that these birds are in seventh heaven. On the contrary, birds are very unhappy in that situation. Even ambrosia will not give these birds any happiness. They will be happy only when they are allowed to fly in the sky and share the company of their mates. We cannot excuse the cruelty of these people on grounds of thoughtlessness.
Cruelty to Animals
Essay # 2
- Kindness to animals a part of virtue.
- Cruelty to animals is often due to thoughtlessness.
- The killing of animals for food.
- The cruelty of sport for pleasure.
The Bible says, “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast,” thus making kindness and justice to domestic animals an essential part of human virtue. The animals, like the horse. dog, ass, and mule, which men have bred and trained for their own use, and which are often faithful and hard-working servants, have indeed a claim upon our mercy and justice; the more so because they are dumb and helpless in our hands, and cannot plead their own cause. The man who starves his horse, beats his dog, or unmercifully overloads his ass, is a brute and bully. He is also a fool; because even a selfish slave-owner knows that it is in his own interest to have well-fed and cared for slaves. And yet when we think of what these dumb creatures suffer at the hands of men, it is enough to make angels weep. As the poet Blake said:
“A captive Redbreast in a cage
Sets all Heaven in a rage.”
A great deal of cruelty to animals is simply due to thoughtlessness and lack of imagination. People often inflict terrible suffering on dumb creatures without meaning to be cruel. How many happy wild birds are caught and kept in small cages to please us with their songs! People think nothing of it, and imagine that if they keep the bird well-fed and its cage clean, it will be quite happy. But how can a wild creature which is used to flying in the sky in boundless liberty, ever be happy cooped up in a narrow space? If we could imagine what the poor prisoner felt, its pathetic songs in captivity would make us miserable with remorse rather than give us any pleasure. We cannot excuse our cruelty on the ground of thoughtlessness. It is our duty to think, and no one who cannot enter into the feelings of an animal and sympathies with it in its weakness and helplessness should be allowed to own one.
There is no time to discuss the question of killing animals for food. But if men must have meat to eat, it is their duty to – see that such animals are killed painlessly. It makes one shudder to think what tortures sheep and oxen have to undergo at the hands of brutal men in unregulated slaughterhouses.
As to hunting for mere sport, it is always cruel. Fox-hunters pretend that the fox enjoys being hunted! I wonder how they would like it themselves! Cruelty to animals is most more wicked than cruelty to men; simply because the animals are helpless and dumb.
