I’ve seen this happen with cats. Extremely rarely an individual walks into an animal shelter and expressly picks out the most unpopular, sickest, unadoptable, oldest, undesirable animal in the shelter and adopt him or her. It’s almost the exact opposite what nearly everybody else does. And it is the most beautiful form of human behaviour that you will probably see in the human-to-animal relationship. And it isn’t just me who thinks this. Nearly everybody else does as well. How do I know?
RELATED: PICTURE OF A YOUNG WOMAN AND THE 20-YEAR-OLD CAT SHE ADOPTED SO HE WOULDN’T DIE ALONE.
There’s a woman on the Quora.com website who did it (or she is narrating a story). She lives in Kathmandu Nepal. Her name is Mandira Shrestha. I think she’s married or has a partner because the photograph of this dog (a beautiful photograph – see above)) shows what I believe is a man. Mandira is a teacher with an MA from Tribhuvan University.
And when she went to the shelter she went into this lucky dog’s cage and “he didn’t even bother to look, he knew I wouldn’t even see him”. But he did see her when she ran towards him, “suddenly he looked at me as if he saw an angel. I hugged him and told him that now he’ll be happy again. Then he sleeps in my lap. Probably the first peaceful sleep he ever had. Give it a life. Give it a hug. They need us.”
She signs off “from a dad who saved a soul”. That confuses me because she suddenly becomes a man! It doesn’t matter. Maybe she is narrating a story about a man and it isn’t actually her who adopted this lucky cat. Once again it doesn’t matter. It is the sentiment that matters and the picture portrays the beauty of that action.
You know, the whole story could be fiction. I don’t care really because as mentioned it is about the behaviour and the sentiment which counts. Her post on Quora.com received a huge number of approvals and comments. Far more than normal. That’s how I know people think like me in finding these sorts of stories very touching. It is because we see the goodness in the behaviour of the person who did it. Perhaps we would like to be like them when we realise that we aren’t. It goes against the grain of normal human behaviour. This is evident in the fact that black cats are left on the shelf. The white kitten is always first. People select on beautiful appearance. They don’t select on whether they can save the life of an unpopular cat or dog who would otherwise probably be euthanised.
