This is an example of what appears to be extreme insensitivity by local authority contractors who were painting yellow line markers on the edge of a road in Kerry, the Republic of Ireland. A black-and-white cat had been hit by a car and killed. His body was lying at the edge of the road. I would argue that the workmen who are doing the road markings must have been aware of this because when you lay down road markings you have to watch the edge of the road and remove objects and barriers so that the line markings are accurately placed.
If I’m right then they would have seen the cat ahead and ignored him. As a consequence the yellow line markings went over his legs as you can see in the photograph.
An animal welfare group has expressed concern over the highly insensitive behaviour of these local authority contractors. Animal Help Net Kerry’s spokesperson said the incident was shameful:
“We have just received a photo, when line painting was being done in the Ballyheigue area nobody cared enough to move this poor cat who had been killed by a car and the line was painted over it… Shame on those concerned.”
A local councillor said that the work had been performed very carelessly in his/her view. They agreed that the least that the contractors could have done was to have removed the cat from the side of the road before doing the painting.
The reason or excuse given is that this is a rural farming area where it is said that on any one road there may be several cats. They mean cats in the area regularly cross roads and are therefore exposed to being killed by traffic. I suppose what they’re saying is that a lot of cats get killed on the roads and therefore a blasé approach is taken towards them.
If that is intended to be an excuse then it is feeble, obviously. There is no excuse. It indicates a lack of sensitivity and awareness. It also indicates a lack of intelligence in my opinion. It is this kind of attitude towards domestic cats which can quite often lead to cat abuse. Indeed, this is a form of cat abuse although the cat is dead. It is one of the first times I have seen a dead cat being abused.
P.S. Perhaps the contractors have been trained to leave roadkill alone. They may have been taught that animals killed on the road are considered to be hazardous to health. I wonder whether this is the reason for what appears to be an insensitive act.
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