Meet Tracy. Recently she happened upon a reel on Instagram about a fostered stray scat with a large cancerous mass on its chin. It looked a lot like that kid from the movie Mask, and Tracy is a cat person so she was transfixed by the horror of the cat’s condition, and the natural draw to a defenseless animal. Thus, she lingered over the video for 15 seconds, and that’s when her life dramatically changed. Every time she goes onto her social media, she is bombarded with animals besieged by various malformations and afflictions. Farms in South America full of hundreds of dogs in wheelchairs. Cats with oral cancer. Cat’s with one eye. Cats with no eyes. Dogs with deformed faces that look like Picasso paintings. A pet racoon subculture. Deer with maimed legs from traps. Rabbits with one testacle. Ducks with crooked beaks. Otters without bladders. Foster cats that have been brought from the brink of despair. Squirrels that drink milk out of teacups. It’s madness and she doesn’t know where it begins and where it ends. She fears even the slightest pause in her scroll will only strengthen the cursed algorithm. She has an ever-present pit in her stomach throughout the day, and she is on the verge of draining her savings account to donate to the ASPCA.
