BLOG: No, This Isn’t Animal Abuse, So Stop Calling It That [VIDEO]

I'm one of the biggest animal lovers in the world, and I can't believe that ANYBODY would call this "animal abuse."

The term for self-righteous moms is "sanctimommies," so what are we going to call all of the self-righteous pet owners? C'mon, we've gotta come up with a clever name.

This video went viral last week, and I, for one, thought it was hilarious. Nicholas Tecosky of Atlanta was exhausted by his cat Italics and his "night meows," so he got his "revenge." If you're a cat owner, like us, this is all too common. We've been there - kitty is hungry, kitty meows at an ungodly hour, pet parents wake up feeling they've got a newborn baby in the house. Italics looks startled, then he goes back to sleep. I laughed and moved on with my day.

And then, I saw this:

Online comments are like pizza - you know it's not going to end well, but it's super hard to resist. So yes, I read them. Animal cruelty, abuse, etc. The sanctimonious pet owners were out with a vengeance.

I'm going to take a wild guess that most of these people have never actually seen animal abuse. My sister's dog was abused before she rescued him. He had one of his eyes poked out by his owners. One of my best friends rescued a dog that was malnourished, and had been beaten by its previous owners.

Now, to play devil's advocate, it IS possible that, if your cat is meowing all night, there might be something wrong. Our first cat, Whiskers, started meowing at night when he was 19. Turned out, he had kitty dementia. We had to put him on Xanax for him to sleep through the night, and we had to put him down about six months later. If your cat is meowing all night, they could be sick, afraid, hungry, or just looking for attention.

Who's to say that this guy didn't take Italics to the vet already? Maybe he did, or maybe he was just trying to make a viral video. Either way, this guy obviously cares about his cat, and he reminded us that Italics is just fine.

This video is animal abuse. This story is animal cruelty. There are countless others, but what this guy did is NOT the same thing. Maybe a little bit mean? Sure. But, Italics is fine. Cats have a short-term memory of about 16 hours. So, rest assured he's forgotten what happened already.

This reminded me of when I talked on the air a few years ago about declawing our cat. I'd never had one before my adult life, and ONE THING I remembered about my friends' cats when I was a kid - they were all declawed. That was just something people did back in the day. I didn't realize that it was considered cruel. Needless to say, I got filleted by callers and keyboard warriors. I firmly believe that there was a nicer way for people to tell me that this is an outdated practice, and for the record, I never declawed any of my three cats prior to or following this incident.

This cat obviously doesn't give any meows about what happened, so we shouldn't either. Now, because I'm a softie, here are pictures of all the cats I've had the pleasure of sharing my home with.