The animals in the story-books of those who grew up in the 70s and 80s were abused terribly – and all for the sake of light entertainment. Take Mousie for example. He was the household pet and the mother tried to drown him, feed him to the owl and then she tied him to a kite and sent him off into the air.
And then we had the more sinister and neglectful sort of mistreatment by human beings. The lion who was forced to drink fizzy orange, for example. His colour started fading, so the zoo keeper kept trying him with different drinks. Milk made him go all pale-faced and water made him disappear completely. But when he discovered fizzy orange, his lovely rustiness came back. Imagine the state of his teeth!
And then there was Casper the cat who was a bit of a tinker. He made muddy footprints everywhere. His owners did not appreciate him at all. Until they realised that they had a talented artist in their midst and lo and behold, they soon began to exploit him when they set up up as a 70’s version of Banksy.
And Andy-Pandy? Totally neglected his boisterous puppy. He was so busy chatting up Looby Loo – and Teddy was so obsessive about his soft furnishings and crafting, that hyper-pup went mad and attacked the ducks on the pond. Causing him to become ‘The Green Puppy’ (nowt to do with his politics, believe me.)
And last but by no means least was a charming little Ladybird book called ‘Puppies and Kittens.’ I used to hide this book because the creatures in it looked so … well. EVIL. So dark and menacing that I could not bear to read it. But the thing is – you can’t really blame any animal for turning on a human being can you? If they’ve been horribly abused or neglected (well, in this picture below, I concede that it is a doll – but I think that it was a symbolic reflection of the entire human race, for meladdo there). After all, they do say that the abused becomes the abuser. Poor little things though. This sort of stuff does make me wonder if these stories and images sort of … sanitised the mistreatment of animals by an entire generation.
Probably.
