Kitten kicked like a football by teenagers. 1 leg torn from its body. Do you know your child's attitude toward animals?

CNN has a video of a kitten that was used as a football by some teenagers. After emergency surgery to survive, the little gray friend now has only 3 legs but hopefully a new lease on life.

Define sadist:

someone who obtains pleasure from inflicting pain or others

Someone’s teenage children did this. They actually found it fun and derived pleasure from kicking a cute kitten, weighing less than a lb. as it if were a football.

The teenagers probably weighed over 120 lbs and used their full human strength to kick this little gray kitten around. Growing up I have heard of even more tortuous things done to cats in particular such as illegal firecrackers inserted into their rectum and ignited.

Do you find that in anyway funny? As a free willed reader of this site, I very much doubt that you do. However, why not try a little experiment. Mention what I said to your teenage child (and/or their visiting friends) and watch their face closely for a reaction. If you see even a hint of a smile, or if they dismiss it without paying much attention to it, it’s your opportunity to reel them back in… set them straight.

As a parent, your child starts out as a blank slate. It’s our job to start filling in the details as best we can, forming the person they will grow to be as an adult. We have many lessons for them, and it is a lifetime relationship and education. Even as we learn with wisdom of age, we need to keep passing along our own discoveries.

Did you know that there is very little difference between a good child and a bad one? Take the baby child of a President, Nobel peace winner, or scholar… place them into isolation with no love and just enough food for them to survive… and they very well may survive, but they will become feral.

They will lose the ability to learn a language after their initial years pass, and they will act and respond like a wild animal taken out of the woods with no real sense of morality whatsoever. Fight or flight may be the only animal instinct left. This is not imaginary. In extreme cases of abuse, this has been observed in real life.

In the same token, the child of a murderer, rapist, or thief can be taken into a good home and taught the right values and turn out to be a caring & righteous citizen.

If you have children, remember that you too have a clean slate lying before you. It’s your job to teach them values and help them form their own sense of morality. I’m sure that you teach them the importance of getting an education, staying safe, being respectful and obedient to “you”. Make sure you don’t forget to impart on them a respect for all creatures and all life.

Do not assume that they already feel as you do. They observe and learn from many sources. Unless you have spent time talking to them or have given them demonstrative examples of correct behavior, they may have secretly formed alternative feelings about issues as important as valuing human and animal life.

Try telling them the story I mentioned above. Judge their reaction, and decide whether or not a further discussion might be warranted. If you find any implanted bad attitudes, taken them on a field trip to the animal sanctuary and let someone speak to them.

We can operate or put down injured dogs and cats. But that is just a “reactive” solution. That does not solve the real problem. The root cause is something deeper and darker. And as parents, we need to help make sure our kids have not been developing any unhealthy attitudes about animals. Leave them too long, and they could grow into adults with some scary belief systems.

Note: There may be some issues displaying the video as CNN’s video service is unreliable.