A few months ago, after 40 minutes of a refreshing game, my friends and I were walking back from the playground, chatting about trivial things. Just then, a black cat came towards me and made it apparent that it wanted to be cuddled. Being an ailurophile, I bent down and gently patted its head, enjoying the expression of comfort that its face had assumed. My friend standing next to me asked me why I was cuddling a cat and that too, a black one, which doesn’t come across as a ‘cute’ creature. That remark set me thinking, because it wasn’t the first time that someone was telling me such a thing. Aren’t such animals supposed to be loved?
Such a disappointing contradiction exists in the world we live in today. We talk about the importance of loving animals, when in reality, our love for animals seems to be confined to only ‘good looking’ creatures. Many a time, people have asked me about why I love cats, considering the fact that they are supposedly not ‘faithful’ or ‘loyal’. We talk about unconditional love and proudly advertise the fact that we are animal lovers, but sadly, have the ability to show our love to only those creatures that do us a favour in return. Animal love means equally loving all these creatures that are so genuine with their emotions. It means not discriminating between the animal that is more ‘beneficial’ to us and the one that is less. It is sad that we tend to apply the same ideology to human relationships too and fail to look beyond a ‘give and take’ in every relationship.
The writer is a student of class XII, P.S.B.B. Nungambakkam
