Remember that scene in the beloved Disney classic 101 Dalmatians when Patch sat firmly on the side of the road, waiting for some compassionate nomad to take pity on him, only for said nomad to realize that there were fourteen other puppies lying in the tall grass, ready and waiting to take full advantage of his aforementioned compassion?
I don’t either, but there’s a good-to-fair chance that that would have been the better cut of the movie, as it presents a moral dilemma whose nuances we’re not quite used to seeing. This, in spite of the fact that there’s only one correct response to this situation, as demonstrated by resident internet good guy Robert Brantley.
Distributed on TikTok via Pubity, the scene is perfect; a lone, ostensibly helpless kitten shuffling around on the side of the road, small enough to nap on the inside of your palm, and cute enough that you’d allow it to do so as long as it pleases. He will henceforth be known as Scout, as that’s what Robert ended up naming him (spoilers, by the way).
So, of course, Robert stops to scoop Scout up with the noble goal of bringing him to safety. The moment he makes contact, however, the tall grass near the side of the road shuffles haphazardly as Scout is revealed to have lured Robert into a generosity trap. Indeed, out from the grass springs a rough count of nine other kittens who were depending on the kindness of a stranger to return to the safety of domesticity.
Ten kitties, of course, is a big ask for most, and so Scout was seemingly selected to lure Robert out and get him to a point where he couldn’t say no to Scout’s brothers and sisters. Their insistence to crowd Robert with their hypnotic adorableness eventually sealed the deal on this mass rescue, as Robert revealed it to be in the video description.
And it’s a good thing he did too, because can you imagine the full metal rage of the commenters if the fate of these kitties was left undetermined? Luckily, Robert had the wisdom to satiate them with the aforementioned description, and so the replies could focus on more important observations, like how Robert discovered the fabled “cat distribution system,” or seeing Scout’s tactics and raising him the respect he’s earned.
It’s at once a touching story that simultaneously gives us a window into a sad reality. According to PETA, the United States alone harbors an estimated 70 million homeless dogs and cats at any given time. This is attributed to non-spayed and non-neutered pets who reproduce too quickly for other homes to keep up with, and their offspring are then abandoned on account of a lack of resources (and/or, oftentimes, compassion).
But then you have people like Robert, who step up to right the wrongs of this planet by making sure that Scout and all of his siblings had a loving home instead of a short lifetime of danger and scarcity. Such is the power that each and every one of us has to make the world a little brighter than it was a couple of seconds ago.