Araceli Mendonça saw a cat standing in her yard in Paraguay. It was wearing a collar. For anyone, that would be the first sign that the animal already had an owner and a life somewhere else.
She didn’t care. She put the cat in a carrier, took it to a veterinarian, and asked to have it spayed. She told the whole story herself on TikTok, as if it were a funny anecdote, without imagining that the video would end up revealing something very different: a decision made about the body of an animal that did not belong to her, without asking anyone.
The neighbor, the cat’s actual owner, was not consulted at any point. And that’s the problem that outraged thousands of users: since when can someone make decisions for an animal —and its family— just because it showed up in their yard?