Status: Real (unfortunately)
A series of pictures showing a woman crushing a kitten to death with her stiletto heels is causing an uproar over in China. The pictures first appeared on the internet and have recently been published by some Chinese newspapers. The woman in the photos has been dubbed the Kitten Killer of Hangzhou, because the background scene has been identified as Hangzhou. I've been able to locate four of the pictures in the series, but I think there are a few more (far more graphic) ones. Here are the ones I found (I don't have larger versions):
The big question is: Who is this woman? One theory is that the images come from a Japanese shoe advertisement. Another theory identifies the kitten killer as a "37-year-old woman from Hubei province with the internet identity 'Gainmas.'"
The London Telegraph elaborates:
She had registered a website in Hangzhou and - the ultimate evidence - had bought a pair of stilettoes on eBay last year. She was also registered with QQ, a popular Chinese message service, where she wrote of herself: "I furiously crush everything to do with you and me." Before her QQ address went dead, its owner had several conversations. In one, she is coy, saying "So what?" when asked if the pictures are of her, and then, when asked again, replying: "In theory." When confronted by a reporter, she became defensive, saying: "Suddenly hundreds of people are on my QQ and cursing me. What's the problem if I crush cats? It's a type of experience. You wouldn't understand."
The Telegraph goes on to note:
No one seems to have suggested the serious possibility that the photographs could be a hoax - created by picture-altering computer software. But in the face of tight control of self-expression, young Chinese are seeking wildly different forms of sensation or satire on the state of society.
Without having seen all the pictures (and better quality ones), it's hard to judge whether or not they're real. But it certainly seems like this has already become the Chinese version of
Bonsai Kitten (with the added twist that it may be real... in which case it's definitely disgusting).
Update: A "Crush" video is circulating around (you can find links to it in the comments, if you're interested) that makes it pretty clear the woman really did step on a kitten. Also, an article in the
Shanghai Daily reports that the lady, and the guy who produced the video, have been identified. The producer, who is a camera operator at a TV station, has apologized. However, the woman, who works as a nurse at a hospital, has disappeared, leading to concerns that kitten commandoes may have abducted her (or something along those lines).
Comments
On another note, violent cruelty isn't endemic just to humans. I remember hearing about a bored elephant who would leave trails of bread crumbs around and then try to smash the birds that ate them (so her keepers taught her to paint). Also, in young animals, seemingly pointless kills may be made for the animal to learn how to hunt, or simply for entainment. I know my cat shows no mercy to smaller animals.
With the seeming IQ of a cluck
Who perhaps played a game
With the object to flame
But was all logical thought sure to duck
wow, thats just pure poetry Sam...I will extend you a courtesy you have not extended me and will refrain from posting any ignorant comments about you. Although maybe you should take your own advice about being subtle.
And David, I understand what you are saying however, I never said anything about wishing the lady harm so I was not really sure why that comment was directed at me.
Who said, with the voice of a duck,
"I sure am-a spittin'
'Bout thet girl and her kitten,
But the rest of it, I don't give a f***!"
Now Sam was a poster quite rare,
And really he did seem to care
That people shouldn't fret
O'er some bint and her pet
While he wasn't getting his share!
But David's the lone voice of reason,
and truly a man for all season(s).
With a wit so sublime,
he's ne'er stuck for a rhyme.
Even though you all know he's just teasin'!
What, mine or Sam's. In either case, I'd say that the comment was a response to your posts in the spirit of open discussion, this being a forum an' all. So, when you said "I will show you what it's like to have your head crushed under a boot." you were in fact volunteering to lie down and have someone stamp on your head for the purposes of demonstration. Wow, that's dedication!
So would it be wrong to feel enjoyment, vindication, 'justice had been done', or whatever if something unfortunate did happen to her?
Wouldn't that just be 'a wish come true'? Nothing to be ashamed of there, right?
and truly a man for all season(s).
With a wit so sublime,
he's ne'er stuck for a rhyme.
Even though you all know he's just teasin'!
ok, that was pretty good.
So, when you said "I will show you what it's like to have your head crushed under a boot." you were in fact volunteering to lie down and have someone stamp on your head for the purposes of demonstration. Wow, that's dedication!
damn you and your pedantry David! *shakes fist at David* and yes, I am being sarcastic.
real or not, its still disturbing
I doubt I'd shed any if you were, but not because of any personal antipathy.
I just have trouble with who's company "he/she/they got what was coming to them" puts you in with. It's what's behind those crowds you see celebrating the latest terrorist attrocity, and the lynch mobs, and fatwas.
I just have trouble with who's company "he/she/they got what was coming to them" puts you in with. It's what's behind those crowds you see celebrating the latest terrorist attrocity, and the lynch mobs, and fatwas.
Hm, sounds kind of hypocritcal to me.
Oh well. That's what you get when someone tries to lecture you on the internet. Save your moral superiority for someone who cares.
Sure, it sounds weird from a person who loves 'silence of the lambs', but I hate animals dying, people are different. Death of one is a tradgedy, the death of a million is just a statistic. 😉
Is my mind playing tricks or does that ring bells with anyone else?
Whatever, it's still makes my stomach turn.
So, maybe not just ONE little kitten after all.
As much as you'd like to think that this one woman is the only one out there doing this sort of thing, she's not even the tip of the iceberg. There are a LOT of very sick, twisted people out there, who get off on the most disturbing things imaginable. One of the things that pops up is women crushing small critters underfoot, usually while barefoot or wearing nice shoes - it seems to be a sub-genre of foot fetishism. Throw in an asian woman, and you have made some incredibly perverted people very, very happy.
Honestly, the fact that it's making the news tells me one thing: Slow News Day. There's no way this hasn't been brought to the attention of media outlets before, who probably said something like: 'This is something that will generate a tremendous amount of attention, shocking our viewers like nothing else. Since it's not going to vanish overnight, save it for when we need a boost in ratings'. Perhaps the Chinese, insulated from the rest of the Internet, actually haven't seen this sort of thing until now..
>Hm, sounds kind of hypocritcal to me.
No, just impersonal. You can read about one tragic death or another in just about any day's news, are you permanently in tears? I doubt it.
>I just don't like to think about animals dying.
Ah, but if they had killed other animals, they'd just be getting what's coming to them, right?
The 'moral superiority' here is putting one's own thoughts and actions out of reach of the criticism one directs at another. It's the "I know I'm right" and "I'm only saying/doing this for good reasons", and mostly the "but that's different" in every argument.
Is it the crushing of animals people are objecting to? Or just the fact that this animal is 'cute and fluffy', whereas that harmless house-spider they flattened last week was 'icky and horrible'?
Or is it the filming of it? Would it have been okay if done in private?
So what about bull-fights? Or hunting? What about animal testing? And slaughter-houses?
Unless everyone here improbably turns out to be a practising Jain, we all hurt animals on daily basis. But suddenly everyone is so damn sure that where they draw the line is in exactly the right place? Sorry, but I see the old, old story; a group of people gather to determine the moral high-ground and lo-and-behold if its not under their very feet!
Sorry, but somebody has to make bad taste jokes around here and keep some sense of proportion.
"Odd to draw a moral equivalence between killing a cat and killing human beings. I try not to kill anything unnecessarily -- even ants on a sidewalk -- but I wouldn't think to equate, say, the poultry industry with the Holocaust, or a mouse-trap with a man-trap."
I don't equate killing animals with killing humans. It's the mindset that it takes to torture a helpless animal to death for pleasure (and film the act) that I find repugnant.
So you're saying that people should be killed to, because we kill other animals to eat right? And some even hunt for fun.
"Is it the crushing of animals people are objecting to? Or just the fact that this animal is 'cute and fluffy', whereas that harmless house-spider they flattened last week was 'icky and horrible'?"
This I must agree, I am against the killings of ANY lifeforms that is uncalled for. That's why whenever i see spiders/bugs in my house, i always set them free =)
God I hate bullfights and animal testing. I think if the purpose of that experiment is to benefit humans, then we should use humans to begin with.
As for slaughterhouses, I am not against the purpose of it (food) but I am certainly against the killing methods.
Food animals need to be treated better!! IF they are going to DIE for us, the least we can do is make sure they live nicely and die a peaceful death.
So your justification for killing these animals is so that you can enjoy yourself?!
O-o-okay...
Todays word is "hypocrisy". Brought to you by the letters ACLU.
No, several posters have expressed a wish to do this woman harm, or that harm somehow comes upon her, and the justification has been that she would deserve her fate because of her actions. While you are quite right that a more consistent application of this rule would put a hell of a lot more people on God's 'do bad things to' list, I was actually extending their argument to other animals. If I mightn't approve of their actions is it okay to think they deserve their suffering?
>I think if the purpose of that experiment is to benefit humans, then we should use humans to begin with.
I think the number of volunteers for an LD50 test would be quite low unless people were forced to participate. We should use lawyers, that way no-one would mind any suffering.
>As for slaughterhouses, I am not against the purpose of it (food) but I am certainly against the killing methods.
I was a vegetarian (for dietary reasons; no meat, no fish, very occasional egg) for many years, and can quite attest to the fact that we don't need meat. That I'm not now is because it is very much easier to maintain a balanced diet if some meat is included in your diet.
I have also actually been round a slaughterhouse. Let's just say it is not a family day out. The actual killing was quick and (apparently) painless, but some animals were quite clearly distressed from the moment they entered the building up to the coo-de-gracey.
Imagine waking up one morning to find yourself tied to a chair. Suddenly a man with a revolver walks in, spins the barrel, points the gun at your head and... *click*. He walks out. Five minutes later he's back and does the same thing again. Then five minutes after that. Then five minutes after that. Soon he starts pulling the trigger twice, soon after three times, then *BANG*.
A bullet in the head is quick and painless. Thank God you didn't suffer.
The ACLU campaign to stop whale-hunting? Why?
😉
The only reason we're even having this argument is that our civilization can afford to treat and view animals like pets and friends. Do a little traveling and you will soon notice that animals in many countries are viewed and treated as tools, food and money. They are sometimes malnourished, badly treated and slaughtered in ways that would make your gun story look like a fairytale. We feel for the kitten because we might have one as a pet, a friend. To someone who can hardly feed their children, the kitten means nothing but one more mouth to feed. Is it ok to torture it? Of course not.
But if you're going to twist my argument to say that it's ok to kill animals so I can enjoy myself, I'll tell you that yes, I enjoy meat, I don't force myself to eat it and cry the whole time for the cow that was killed; mostly I am greatful for its life and the food it has provided, and I ensure it doesn't go to waste in the fridge.
Question: did she sedate the cat before stepping on it? I mean: it doesn t seem to try to run away. Might it be possible that the cat wasn t alive (I don t see any movements of the cat that could not also have happened after it s death). The meeeeowww could be dubbed.
Anyway: I hope the kitten was dead before she stepped on it.
AEIOU
BTW: there was the story of that chinese guy eating a roasted baby, some time ago. A friend of mine, an artist from Berlin, was in China for 2 years in some kind of exchange program and showed me photos showing him on an exhibition where that "artist" exhibited dead babies and dead bodies. He said they definetly were real, not fake, and police came an hour after the opening of the "art show" to close that joint down ... nobody was arrested, though, as the laws don t explicitly forbid actions like this. I think there re strange things going on in china.
You do not need to eat meat to survive, you choose to do so. Hence the 'reason' that makes killing animals moral (as in "killing any living thing for no reason is also immoral", remember) is so that you may eat them if you so choose. As you point out, there's a fair amount of cultural relativism (ack, I hate that phrase) going on here; like the eating of dogs and horses, some people cannot believe it is right even when they themselves eat cows and sheep.
You've picked a weak argument. The actual reasons to eat meat are slight, but we strongly desire to do so and accept the deaths of animals as a necessary part of the process. In essence, we are killing animals merely for our enjoyment, we just bury the resultant dissonance under the supersized side-order of fries and carry on. Do you really think people's reactions would have been different if this woman had skinned the kitten, pan-fried it with fresh shallots and eaten it with a chinese leaf salad?
Um...ok, so did it ever occur to you that the reason we strongly desire to eat meat is that it is natural for us to do so? The proteins we need to live a healthy life are found naturally in meat, and humans have been eating it since before they even understood the reason of its benefits. Nature intended for us to enjoy it, because we need it to survive.
Vegans choose not to eat meat and replace the much needed proteins with other things, but you'll have to agree that this process is much more complicated and thus not the natural way of doing things. I respect their choice and admire them for standing by their convictions; this doesn't mean however that I feel bad for not choosing to do the same thing.
I don't think my argument is weak, I think we both agree that we do not enjoy the torture of any animal, human or plant, and that we have different ideas on the moral issue of killing 'for a reason'.
Oh, and as for your last idea, if she had humanely killed the kitten before grilling it, I would not have been nearly as opposed to what she did as I am now.
Here I go. People eat meat. Big deal. No, people do not need meat to survive, beans and nuts have enough protein, but people have eaten meat for forever and the majority will not stop because you argue about it on a thred. Also, this has NOTHING to do with the kitten killer.
Secondly, people are upset about the kitten killer becaus it's the NEEDLESS (and painful) dying of a BABY DOMESTIC animal. It's dying for no apparant reason, that's #1. It's just a baby, that's #2, and #3 is that it is a domestic animal, like what we have in our own homes. It hits close to home. This is not the place to argue about vegetarianism, this is a place to argue about whether this video is a hoax or real.
I havent seen the video/pictures, and I'm not going to because I'm a fourteen year old girl, and I'd be scared out of my mind, but I'm not going to argue about people's choices in diet. I'll leave that to you.
What can potentially be resolved is how genuine this woman's stunt was. Since there is apparently a video as well as the pictures, I doubt that the images have been manipulated to make it appear that she was stepping on the kitten when she really wasn't. Doing that sort of fakery convincingly to photographs is hard enough; going back and editing the images in a video would be a major effort.
So I think that the woman is indeed actually stepping on something. That leaves the question of what she's stepping on. Is it a real, live kitten? Is it a dead kitten? Or is it a fake kitten?
I would say it s not a trick, definetly not digitally manipulated (way too much effort and too perfectly real for a digital illusion anyway), but probably the cat is whether heavily sedated or already dead, as it doesn t try to run away and/or makes any visible effort of resistance against what that woman is doing. The sound got probably dubbed in afterwards. At least I hope so.
The argumentation that animals are getting killed for food, too, is in my opinion not in any way appropriate, as there s a main difference if something gets killed for food or if something gets killed for fun and for the enjoyment of gruesome cruelty against a (maybe) living creature. Even if for example animals are getting killed for the skin (leather for shoes or whatever) there s no real sense in inappropriate cruelty against the animal.
On the other side (I m shooting my own leg now): football is fun for a lot of people and the ball is made out of leather. So the animal that got killed for producing the football also got killed "for fun".
...maybe it s the wrong place to discuss something like this.
Ain t it a crazy thing that china is censoring western websites and on the other side there s stuff like this swapping into the web from china? Maybe china shouldn t censor the western websites but western websites should censor chinese ones. First time ever that I m thinking of something like this. It s sick sick sick...
Yet I wonder too if all this noise had been raised if it had been a cockroach instead of a kitten.
I have to agree with Acci. Also, I mentioned before I'm allergic to dead animals. When my Guinea Pig died, it would have been left in it's cage for a week before my husband came home from a training trip. Luckily (for me) my sister & her boyfriend were visiting & were able to dig a hole & stick the thing inside. I don't mind animals dying...and I even helped kill a rooster (to eat). There's just something about their dull eyes, limp bodies...ICK.
I would be just as grossed out by a human body as an animal being squished to death.
And LaMa...cockroaches don't really make noise while being crushed - but *I* personally would be grossed out by a yucky squished body with guts coming out of it. If I knew it was just crushed & could not see it - I would not be upset at all.
i do eat meat & enjoy it but i am really againts cruelety to animals of any kind
my two cents to the moral-discussion: a lot of posters have mixed up something here. it's not about killing a animal, it's a about torturing an animal to death. if you don't see the difference - well go fuck yourself, heartless piece of shit.
but now for something completely different:
i can't go to sleep until i really know if it's fake or real.
something is clear: a normal, healthy cat wouldn't react like this. it would try to escape. the cat in the video doesn't - the quesion is why.
some have assumed that the cat is on some sedatives (or perhaps on drugs). that was also the first thing coming in my mind. other assumed the cat to be already dead. but then, how do you explain the cats moves.
in fact, the movement of the cat looks very strange. this brought an other horrible consideration to my mind. look closely at the legs at the beginning of the movie, when the women carries the cat. they look very unnatural.
i have absolutley no idea abot anatomy - but could it be possible to break some specific bones to circumvent that the cat can flee? do you understand my question, my englist is very bad, sorry. i would be very happy if someone could give me an answer.
i really hope my speculations are wrong - if not, it would be even more horrible. i really hope, the cat was sedated.
also strange are the eyes of the cat, they look like the eyes of a dead cat to me. and the sound is odd too, sounds like overdubbed.
some 'experts' should take care of this, i really need to now the truth.