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<p>People can be cruel and sick.</p><p>The pages of this and most newspapers remind readers about human depravity on a daily basis.</p><p>It is not a surprise, but every so often a case comes along that shakes us on a visceral level. Usually they involve humans doing horrible things to one another, but sometimes our worst impulses are taken out on defenseless animals.</p><p>So it was on Tuesday when we learned that someone in Plymouth has been fishing for cats.</p><p><a href="https://www.timesleader.com/news/739705/cats-baited-with-fish-hooks-tied-to-string" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The story appears on our website</a>, but to reiterate briefly, three fishhooks attached to a string were surgically removed from a cat rescued from a vacant residence on East Main Street on Monday.</p><p>Dawn Mandygral, who runs Happy Hearts &amp; Tails Safe Haven Animal Rescue, said she managed to remove 10 cats from the vacant house but has yet to find two other cats she was told had string emerging from their anuses.</p><p>As this editorial was being prepared on Tuesday no formal suspect had been named, but social media was buzzing with accounts of an individual who bragged about fishing for felines.</p><p><a href="https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/animal-cruelty-facts-and-stats" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">As The Humane Society of the United States points out</a>, intentional cruelty to animals is strongly correlated with other crimes, including violence against people, and those who intentionally abuse animals are predominantly men under 30.</p><p>Whoever did this &#8212; adult or child &#8212; needs to be punished, but we also suspect they need help.</p><p>No healthy, emotionally balanced person would derive satisfaction from inflicting this kind of pain on a creature for the sake of doing so. It also makes us fear what they might do to other humans.</p><p>We write this with a heavy sense of irony, for Wednesday&#8217;s paper carries several other stories about the complex interactions between humans and animals.</p><p>There is the story of Gretchen and Dandy, two donkeys from The Lands at Hillside Farms, who came down from the farm on Tuesday to visit with grade school students at Children&#8217;s Service Center.</p><p>There also is the story of a cow from Hillside Farms brought to visit an elderly care home resident the same day.</p><p>Then there is the story of Tuesday&#8217;s Pennsylvania Game Commission decision that moved deer hunting season to the first Saturday after Thanksgiving.</p><p>Sometimes animals are companions, other times they are workers, still other times they become food.</p><p>The circle of life has been thus for eons. While we acknowledge and respect that some people have objections to hunting animals and killing them for food, we also believe there are humane ways of doing both.</p><p>Goring a cat with a fishhook is not a matter of sustenance or sport. It&#8217;s just sick.</p><p>We are grateful that there are good-hearted people like the folks at Hillside Farms, like Mandygral and like Dr. Inayatullah Kathio, who treated the hooked cat.</p><p><em>&#8212; Times Leader</em></p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Three fish hooks attached to a string were surgically removed from a cat rescued from a vacant Plymouth residence on Monday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/web1_cat-fish-hook.jpg</photo0><caption0>Three fish hooks attached to a string were surgically removed from a cat rescued from a vacant Plymouth residence on Monday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted </photoCredit0></div></div>

Our View: Sickened and saddened by cat abuse