Cat Torture?

We're having a little debate here in the greater Tampa area, and it centers on an age-old question: How evil is dressing up your pet?

Apparently, Checker/Rally, a local/regional burger joint, is sponsoring some sort of "Rapcat" contest. When I saw the headline, I figured it had something to do with cats and urban music. So I clicked on the link.

And apparently, no - it did not involve music. It involved, literally, wrapping one's cat. In a decorated paper bag. With head and leg holes cut in. Actually, TBO referred to them as "armholes," but I don't think cats technically have "arms." The cat owner is supposed to decorate said bag with the logos of favored sports teams and then take pictures. The pictures are to be sent somewhere, and apparently, the best pictures will net the winning owner...something.

Huh? I followed the link to the "rapcat" site. There's no information there, but there is a picture of a stuffed cat dressed as a "rapper."

Which makes me wonder about the paper-bag sports-team thing.

Whatever. The good people at Hillsborough County Animal Services are concerned that beyond just being stupid, this activity could be cruel. Because perhaps (and Animal Services wasn't taking a hard stand on this), most cats would not enjoy being shoved into a paper bag.

Well, the official Bad Dog position is one that supports humiliation of cats. However, we do not under any circumstances support any form of meanness to any pet animals.

We recognize that the act of shoving a cat in a paper bag would, under most circumstances, pose absolutely no threat to anything except the dignity of the cat in question. Whatever idiot would try to shove a cat in a paper bag would probably also suffer severe arm lacerations, which strikes us as appropriate. So at first blush, we SUPPORT the idea of shoving cats in paper sacks.

HOWEVER - this contest appears to be non-specific, tacky and stupid. We feel that the target audience of this contest is probably also quite stupid, and thus we're not certain they can be trusted to shove cats in bags without taking things too seriously and hurting the cats.

So - upon review, our verdict is one of disapproval. We do not support this dumbass "rapcat" contest. You shouldn't either. Find other ways to humiliate your cat that don't encourage corporate entities to dream up stupid shit like this.