From the mouth of a babe

Recently, while in slow-moving traffic on the highway in Cocorite, my cousin Lisa and her eight-year old (“but soon I’ll be nine”) son Sam witnessed a violent killing.

Later, in a post his mother let him write on her Facebook page, Sam declared: “Today I witnessed a very horrible thing a nice kitty while he was walking around a vagrant picked him up and slammed his head on a pole (sic)."

A poster he designed for the feline victim (today’s illustration, cropped to fit the space) featured the wording: “Animals are so innocent and fun. U should love them. No hurting. Bye Bye, Kitty. You didn’t deserve that. From Sam.”

Lisa commented on the Facebook post: “My Sam wrote this. It broke our hearts to see this today. We both sobbed for about 15 minutes. Sam was screaming continually. These are moments that test everything in us. God help that man who took the life of an innocent animal. God help my son who now understands the darker side of our world. God help me to keep my positive outlook on the world.”

Moved by Sam’s compassionate response to the incident, I asked if I could interview him. When his parents asked him if he would be willing, he said yes, even though he was afraid that “like Martin Luther King, someone might kill me”...for publicly standing up for animals.

Elspeth: Describe what happened.

Sam: We saw a guy with a cat. He was hitting its head against the concrete divider. The guy had on a blue hat and a raggedy T-shirt and raggedy short pants. I think he had slippers on too.

Do you think it was his cat?

Sam: I don’t know. He had it in his hand. He hit it about five times on the concrete divider.

Lisa: In slow-moving traffic we had no choice but to see it

Sam: No one did anything. The guy ran. He didn’t want anyone to see him.

How did you feel when you saw that happening?

Sam: I screamed and cried. Mummy said if she had a chance she would have run him down.

Lisa: Both of us went into panic mode. I was enraged. As a mother I was angry that my son was witnessing this terrible cruelty. And I was angry at the cruelty. Blood was dripping from the cat and the man ran with it high in his hand as if it was a trophy...in a look-what-I-got kind of way.

Sam: He held it up like when I fished and got my fish.

What did you want to tell the vagrant after?

Sam: I wouldn’t say anything nice. I would say: “Why did you do that, horrible monster?”

Was the cat screaming?

Sam: We were in our car so we couldn’t hear. By the first hit on the pole it was probably dead.

What would you tell the cat?

Sam: I would say: “You didn’t deserve to die.”

What inspired you to create the poster?

Sam: Mummy said Jesus would be in heaven patting and loving the cat.

What did you do with the poster?

Sam: I put it in a box and we all kissed the box (me, Mummy and Daddy) and buried it in our yard.

There is a little cat who walks around here who looks exactly like the cat who got killed. I named her Ginger. She came and sat on the rock about four feet away from the grave and I think she looked sad. Then she sat on the grave too.

We are going to put a moulding of a cat made of clay on the grave.

Who’s going to make that?

Sam: Me and Mummy.

What message would you give people about being kind to animals?

Sam: I said on my poster that animals are so innocent and fun. They should not be hurt.

Why do you think people hurt animals?

Sam: Well, I get why they kill chickens for KFC and other stuff. Or maybe when their puppies bite and it hurts and you give them a flick on the nose like I do.

What about people who hurt animals like that man did?

Sam: I don’t know. I don’t know why.

Could you ever do that?

Sam: No.

How come?

Sam: Because I love animals.