Pet owner's 'grotesque' cat toy discovery: 'Feeling pretty repulsed'
A Queensland cat owner was horrified after discovering the toy she intended to buy for her cat was made from another animal.
Gold Coast woman Ellie Sursara expected the “large mouse” she was looking at to be synthetic, but looking closer she became “suspicious".
After rescuing her adult cat, Rastis, from a shelter in September she was keen to give him a happy life, but as an animal lover she was not about to buy him fur.
“I was feeling pretty repulsed by it. It’s weird to think you would buy a toy for your cat made from another animal,” Ms Sursara told Yahoo News Australia.
Ms Sursara believes most people wouldn’t expect “grotesque” fur products to be sold on pet store shelves.
“I think people generally think we've evolved beyond fur,” she said.
“I even asked someone at the counter if they knew what it was made from. She felt it and said, 'I can’t imagine it could be real'.
“It should have been clearly labelled, and I’m really surprised that it wasn’t.”
Why cat owner isn't okay with fur
As the packaging didn’t reveal what materials the Chinese-made Pet One branded product contained, Ms Sursara took to Instagram and private messaged its Australian distributor, Kong’s.
The company quickly confirmed what she had suspected, the mouse had been fashioned out of rabbit fur.
Ms Susara immediately wrote back to Kong’s, highlighting her concerns about China’s rabbit fur farming in general.
While leather products can be a byproduct of the meat industry, animals in fur farms are frequently raised and slaughtered just for their pelts.
China is the world's largest supplier of fur and many animal advocates have welfare concerns about the industry in general.
Undercover exposés of other fur farms in China have shown animals being thrown, bludgeoned, hanged, and skinned alive. Yahoo News Australia is not suggesting Kong's supplier is responsible for such practices.
A number of countries including France, Italy, Austria, Croatia, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the United Kingdom have banned fur farming. Last year Israel became the first country in the world to ban fur sales.
PETA congratulates supplier for fur decision
Hoping to get Kong's to reconsider its use of fur, Ms Susara contacted animal rights non-profit PETA who took up the issue with the company.
While Kong’s did not respond to a request from Yahoo News Australia to comment, PETA said the brand swiftly gave it an assurance that all future products would be synthetic.
PETA’s Emily Rice described the company's “compassionate decision” to stop using it as a “great win for all animals”.
“With animal fur toys still on shelves, we urge consumers to be vigilant and speak up if they suspect fur has been used,” she said.
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