Bonsai Kitten Petition
Netlore Archive: Worldwide email petition seeks to have the infamous Bonsai Kitten website banned for good.
Description: Email petition
Circulating since: May 2001
Status: Junk
Email example contributed by Sethra L., June 4, 2001:
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Hi, friends: To anyone that feel some love or respect for any form of life... What follows may be hard to believe. Please bare in mind that Dr. Mengele, the Nazi war criminal, once said: "The more we do, the less you seem to believe it". There is a Japanese man living in New York that sells "BONSAI CATS". The guy puts the kittens in glass bottle then puts a probe in their anus that gets out from a gap in the bottle to dispense their urine and faeces. For the kittens to take the bottle shape, they are fed with chemicals to melt the bones. Then he keeps the cats for as long as they can survive. They can't move, walk or clean up. He calls this "art". This cruelty is the last fashion in NYC, China, Indonesia, New Zeland, because is a "decoration pet". If you want more information take a look in this site : We are making a list to sent to Animals Protection Association in USA and Mexico, and to TV news, to stop this. We call out to anybody that loves cats or just has basic respect for LIFE - please put your name in the end of this list, then forward this e-mail to anyone you can think of. If in the list you find more than 500 names, please send a copy to anacheca@hotmail.com We are very thankfull to your help and we ask you to send this e-mail. |
Comments: First things first. The Bonsai Kitten site is a hoax - a sick joke. No one is really doing those awful things to kittens (see "Bonsai Kitten" for the history of this prank).
Arguably it's no less reprehensible for its inauthenticity, and many people honestly believe it may incite cruelty to animals whether it's real or not. I won't attempt to dispute that here, but I am duty-bound to observe that the petition is based on the false presumption that Bonsai Kitten is real and is thus both misleading and pointless.
The text originated in Spanish and was badly translated into English during its worldwide travels. Unsurprisingly, the petition effort appears to be strongest in non-English-speaking countries, where it may be harder for users to discern that the site is a prank. The humor may be juvenile, but such clues as there are to its tongue-in-cheek intent are subtly conveyed. Even many native English speakers miss them.
That said, we're not sure whether to attribute the apparent sincerity of the petition to a misunderstanding on the part of its author(s) or to further pranksterism. I.e., the petition itself could be a hoax, but we don't know. We've tested the email address listed as the collection point and found it to be a valid, working account, but it's anybody's guess what the owner may be doing with email sent there.
The piquant irony of all this, of course, is that the international circulation of this petition is only racking up more and more traffic for the much-hated Website. The nameless pranksters behind Bonsai Kitten are surely delighted with the results.
Further reading:
Bonsai Kitten - World's Most Hated Website?
Our original coverage from February 2001Gatos Bonsai
Spanish-language commentary from Rompecadenas.comDo Email Petitions Work?
From Salon.com: Email petitions aren't the best form of activism
Current Hoaxes / Netlore
The Urban Legends Top 25
