NFL Lets Black Cat Suffer Indignity

NFL Lets Black Cat Suffer Indignity

Black cats have a long tradition of being associated with bad luck—and worse, curses from supernatural purveyors of magic.

So, when a black cat mysteriously started darting across the NFL game field in New Jersey when the Cowboys played the Giants, it became a focal point of attention. The game was secondary—and stopped.

Security guards, state police, and stadium staff would be hard-pressed to catch a cat, especially a black one just a few days after the Day of the Dead in Mexico.

You may well think this was an emissary from across the border to lay a comment on Trump’s immigration policy. Commentators at the game thought it was meant to put ill-fortune on the steps of the Cowboys.

The bewildered feline did not simply arrive like a UFO on the playing field. In one of the cruelest jokes of animal abuse, someone let the animal loose during the game.

This cat clearly had been smuggled into the game to create a moment of chaos on national television.

The unfortunate animal stopped running in one direction—and went in the other, looking for an escape while tens of thousands of fans made deafening noise.

You had a sense of why the public conducted the Salem Witch Trials in this microcosm of public fervor. You had a sense as to why sadistic practices involving black cats is commonplace even today.

The cat finally ran to a runway, as no one dared to pick him up or cart him off the field.

This was all thought to be in good fun, but we were in our satirical mode, less than charmed by the action and reaction.

No one has been charged with a crime, and no one may ever be held accountable. Someone’s pet cat was stolen, brought to a venue unfamiliar and released. It is another example of a mentality that is not funny and not kind.