Bonsai kittens

[plindboe]

From a chain letter:

--------------------
To anyone with love and respect for life: In New York there is a Japanese who sells bonsai-kittens". Sounds like fun huh? NOT! These animals are squeezed into a bottle. Their urine and feces are removed through probes.
They feed them with a kind of tube. They feed them chemicals to keep their bones soft and flexible so the kittens grow into the shape of the bottle. The animals will stay their as long as they live. They can't walk or move or wash themselves. Bonsai-kittens are becoming a fashion in New York and Asia.

See this horror at: http://www.bonsaikitten.com

Please sign this email in protest against these tortures. If you receive an email with over 500 names, please send a copy to: anacheca@hotmail.com From there this protest will be sent to USA and Mexican animal protection organizations.
--------------------

Just saw it posted on a danish animal forum today by a very concerned and appaled individual. Sure would like to get me one of those bonzai kittens. I'd prefer a bonzai puppy though.

[Lisa Simpson]

I did the same thing, but I used a Pepsi box.

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2623/banzai002mediumwebview2iv.jpg

Did you post the link to Snopes on the animal forum?
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/bonsai.asp

[plindboe]

I did the same thing, but I used a Pepsi box.


:D


Did you post the link to Snopes on the animal forum?
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/bonsai.asp

Someone beat me to it. Most people reacted with skepticism actually(except 3 gullible people), and it was quickly debunked, so I still have faith in humanity. :)

[LibraryLady]

Sigh.

Hmmm...bonsai budgie. Hmmm....

[CFLarsen]

Old!

[tkingdoll]

Soooooo old! This is older than the very internet itself. There are cave paintings showing bonsai kittens next to the words "ha ha, Ug, gotcha. Love Grug."

[Ryokan]

Bonsai Kittens are indeed ooooold. I still get chain letters from people trying to stop it, though.

[c4ts]

Congratulations, you've discovered the oldest hoax on the internet.

The FBI fell for it and tried to shut down the site, until it was finally explained to them. They must have missed the impossible Klein Bottle Kitty and the e-mails about rectilinear cats...

[luchog]

the e-mails about rectilinear cats...
They probably thought it had something to do with Richard Gere.

[Jeff Corey]

Wasn't that gerbils?

[bruto]

BAck in 1980 a Japanese cartoonist (now, it seems, more noted as a manga artist) named Hideo Takeda put out a book of drawings called Bonsai your Pet, which I suspect was the seed of the bonsai kitten idea, though it might be a coincidence. The pet in this case is a chick taped back into its egg. Anyway, should you run across this book (Dial Press paperback), I heartily recommend it.

[Matilda]

(sulks)
They're not real?
But I want a bonsai kitten! They sound cute.

[Lisa Simpson]

Get a Japanese Bobtail (http://www.cfainc.org/breeds/profiles/japanese.html) instead. They are great cats. That's what my cat in the Pepsi box is. His name is Banzai.

[Matilda]

Awwww, your cat's sweet! They sound like a very cool breed.

[c4ts]

They probably thought it had something to do with Richard Gere.

And just when you thought paralellograms were safe...

[Desktop Icon]

A couple years ago, someone on one of my email lists sent around a distressed message similar to this one -- on and on about how we all need to write to Congress to stop the Bonsai Kitty guy.

I posted back that it was all a hoax and provided the Snopes link along with a few others (I think there was a Wired News article that also debunked it). One would think that this evidence, would be enough to calm someone down, but in this case, it had the opposite effect.

She replied to me with an absolutely frothing message saying that she once worked in an animal shelter and saw firsthand the cruel and horrible things that some people do to animals. Therefore Bonsai Kitty was real. She didn't really go into any detail about how she connected these two pieces together, but it occurred to me that this didn't matter. In a really strange way, she needed Bonsai Kitty to be real so she would have more evidence that some people do bad things to animals.

[Rolfe]

Several years ago the Veterinary Times published a shocked article about the horrors of the bonsai kitten. I laughed quite a lot and waited. It took two weeks for the shamefaced "I was had" to appear.

Rolfe.

[Kiless]

I related this on another site:

"I have a rather... 'bold' laugh. Slightly cackly.

When I suppress it, I start to cry. I hold the laugh in, but tears go instead.

The last time this happened, I had a student doing a speech to the class.

Topic was cultural icons. This particular student hailed from Malaysia, was of Chinese/Malay heritage.

Choosing to be a 'little different', she decided to do hers on 'bonsai kittens'. She knew they were fake but decided to play it comedically 'straight' and bring in some little bonsai trees, explain their function and tradition and then show the fake pics of the kittens in the jars and some nice jars and 'instruments' and explain how a 'bonsai kitten' could be made.

I knew that it was a hoax. The rest of the class didn't.

She stood at the front of the room, 'earnestly' presenting this radical notion of preserving one's kitten with the 'ancient oriental art' and showing 'authentic' kitten ramming equipment (she got some tongs and a meat tenderiser from the kitchen)....

I couldn't laugh aloud. It would have wreaked her joke. And my laugh would have distracted from the report. So I watched, tears streaming down my face, hiccuping now and then with the effort to not laugh.

The rest of the class were horrified. Here was this monsterous girl! Demonstrating this hideous art of mutilating kittens! And the teacher was in tears! She must be so distressed! We all know that she loves cats!!

:D

Anyway, after five or so minutes of report, she quickly cut it a little short because she noticed my tears and SHE thought I was upset! We sorted it out in the end, but since then I make sure ahead of time if someone is going to get 'creative' in speeches and thus I'm better prepared to hide my reactions." :)

[Hawk one]

Kiless, that is pure, pure evil... I love it.

[rjh01]

So let me get this straight. It is not OK to be cruel to kittens. It is funny to upset innocent children and their teachers?

[Hawk one]

rjh01: WHat makes you think any of Kiless' pupils are innocent?

[rjh01]

They had a teacher. If they were adults and it was an adult education class they would not have a teacher. Or is crime involving children the norm?

Oh! The last post was a joke? Right? ... Right?

[Odin]

What about bonsai trees? Do you have any idea how much they scream when you shape them with wire? They brutally have their roots and branches amputated! Would you like to live for the rest of your life in a small dish?

!Warning! The following images are not safe for work and may be distressing!



















http://www.kwiatyozdobne.pl/obrazy/bonsai_wypas.jpg

http://www.kwiatyozdobne.pl/obrazy/bonsai_zelkova_red.jpg

[Kiless]

They had a teacher. If they were adults and it was an adult education class they would not have a teacher. Or is crime involving children the norm?

Oh! The last post was a joke? Right? ... Right?

Sigh.

I'm just having SO much difficulty communicating the 'funny' today, aren't I?

I'll just go to bed early, I guess.

[bruto]

They had a teacher. If they were adults and it was an adult education class they would not have a teacher. Or is crime involving children the norm?

Oh! The last post was a joke? Right? ... Right?

Huh? Adult education classes are taught by what? Robots?

Kids in this case maybe, but given the relative sophistication of the kid doing the presentation, and the subject being "cultural icons," I imagine they were not kindergarteners either. "Crime" is a pretty severe word to apply to a kid making a joke in front of the class, even if you consider it a cruel joke. Anyway, maybe it is all right to upset the other kids a little bit to bring home to them how easily one can be fooled, especially when it comes to assumptions about other races and cultures.

[CFLarsen]

I related this on another site:

"I have a rather... 'bold' laugh. Slightly cackly.

When I suppress it, I start to cry. I hold the laugh in, but tears go instead.

The last time this happened, I had a student doing a speech to the class.

Topic was cultural icons. This particular student hailed from Malaysia, was of Chinese/Malay heritage.

Choosing to be a 'little different', she decided to do hers on 'bonsai kittens'. She knew they were fake but decided to play it comedically 'straight' and bring in some little bonsai trees, explain their function and tradition and then show the fake pics of the kittens in the jars and some nice jars and 'instruments' and explain how a 'bonsai kitten' could be made.

I knew that it was a hoax. The rest of the class didn't.

She stood at the front of the room, 'earnestly' presenting this radical notion of preserving one's kitten with the 'ancient oriental art' and showing 'authentic' kitten ramming equipment (she got some tongs and a meat tenderiser from the kitchen)....

I couldn't laugh aloud. It would have wreaked her joke. And my laugh would have distracted from the report. So I watched, tears streaming down my face, hiccuping now and then with the effort to not laugh.

The rest of the class were horrified. Here was this monsterous girl! Demonstrating this hideous art of mutilating kittens! And the teacher was in tears! She must be so distressed! We all know that she loves cats!!

:D

Anyway, after five or so minutes of report, she quickly cut it a little short because she noticed my tears and SHE thought I was upset! We sorted it out in the end, but since then I make sure ahead of time if someone is going to get 'creative' in speeches and thus I'm better prepared to hide my reactions." :)

Hehehe....critical thinking!