Media madness: Chinese vet decries ‘nonsense’ story of cat’s cosmetic surgery
- Veterinary surgeon says media lacks morals after TV report whips up outrage over post-op images of cat amid claims it was operated on to make it look cuter
- Procedure had ‘clearly’ been carried out to treat an inverted eyelid, he says
A social media “scandal” about a cat that was supposedly subjected to eye surgery to make it look cute has been described by a vet as “clearly nonsense”.
The story began when pictures of the animal with stitches around its red, swollen eyes appeared online. The knee-jerk reaction from some internet users was to assume its owner – believed to be a woman from Nanjing in east China’s Jiangsu province – had paid for the cat to have so-called double eyelid surgery.
Local broadcaster Jiangsu TV picked up the story and in its report on Wednesday said the woman – whom it did not identify – had spent 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) on the procedure, which is popular among East Asian people and involves the reshaping of the upper eyelid to create a crease in it.
The report included interviews with members of the public, many of whom were outraged by the alleged actions of the cat’s owner.
Despite their protestations, veterinary surgeon Liu Xiaoou, who works at the AMC Veterinary Hospital in Nanjing, said on Thursday that the story was almost certainly fabricated “nonsense”.
Giving his opinion of what the online images showed, he said: “It is clearly a surgery to treat an inverted eyelid.”