YouTube: maker of dreams, destroyer of lives

Recently I was shown a video on YouTube that I just can’t get over. Now, I am no stranger to… Recently I was shown a video on YouTube that I just can’t get over. Now, I am no stranger to YouTube – it was where I first learned about the Michael Richards debacle. It was also where I kept up with the epic Donald Trump/Rosie O’Donnell rivalry. It was the place that I learned of a video called “Spirit of Truth” – if you haven’t seen it, watch it immediately.

So in a way, YouTube is one of our generation’s finest outlets for media, entertainment and news. It shows raw, unedited moments that never cease to inform and amaze us. The site has reached a level of journalistic integrity equal to or greater than that of the Fox News Channel – on which, by the way, YouTube has many great videos; might I suggest the documentary “Outfoxed.”

However, the most recent video I viewed was one called “Kitty Washing Machine.” In it, an orange cat is placed in what appears to be some kind of oversized microwave. A few buttons and knobs are pressed, and the cat immediately senses danger.

Water begins shooting from below where the cat is standing, and the feline immediately becomes psychotic. It jumps around as water and soap are sprayed all around the inside of the machine, pawing at the window, begging for someone to free it from the hell it hath encountered.

The video finishes with a clip of the cat wrapped in a towel, being dried.

Now, to be totally honest, I am not the biggest fan of cats. They’re the kind of creatures that want you to pet them, but just as you succumb to their wishes, their claws come out. They sleep more than 20 hours a day and they poop in perfectly good sandboxes. So when I saw this video, my reaction was slightly more than a chuckle. I enjoyed the video, so I decided to show it to my girlfriend. I figured, “Hey, she has a cat! She’ll love this!”

She didn’t.

She didn’t even crack a smile. But once I saw the negative reaction the video received from her, I started thinking. What would I think if a huge cat picked me up and sent me through a car wash? First, I’d wonder if I had accidentally consumed peyote buttons, but after I realized the whole thing was real, what would I think? Well, I guess I’d be terrified that a cat of that size somehow came into existence, but what would I think after I accepted it? I immediately felt bad for my initial reaction to the video. I figured it was just another dumb YouTube video that would lose its pizazz after a couple days.

However, there was a report on CNN.com that indicated that this video may have more of an effect than I ever imagined.

Apparently Andres Diaz, the owner and inventor of the machine – called the Pet Spa – fears that he may suffer financial loss because of this negative portrayal of the feline hygiene experience. Diaz assures that the Pet Spa is more humane than any traditional pet cleansing technique. One thousand five hundred units have been sold worldwide – mostly to vets and pet shops.

Then, naturally, a PETA representative had to chime in with her own brilliant observations about this controversy. According to her, Diaz is a cat-hating, money-hungry, jerk face with a poopie head – I’m paraphrasing. She even went as far as saying that “using this machine is as ridiculous as tossing toddlers in the dishwasher.”

Well, I completely agree. The life of a toddler is equivalent to the life of a cat, and “tossing” a 3-year-old child is about as bad as bathing a house pet. Now I’m glad that this video surfaced. Finally, we can put this money fiend out of a job. Selling 40 of these machines each year is just 41 too many.

Never mind that the machine was created by a group of veterinarians, animal behaviorists and engineers. This one cat on YouTube hated it. Hence, it is wrong.

And shame on everyone who laughed as hard as I first did upon first seeing this video. Isn’t a calendar with pictures of cats in Halloween costume, given to you by your strange aunt, enough to tickle your funny bones? Isn’t Garfield a surplus of cat humor? Wasn’t the movie “Catwoman” funnier than anything else feline-related?

This is an example of the kind of power Internet video has. Through these Web sites, smiles can be brought to people’s faces, or lives can be completely destroyed. Because of what appears to be a kitty snuff film, the creator of an invention used by evil, animal-hating veterinarians all over the globe will be stopped.

E-mail Josh about microwaving cats for fun and profit at jmg77@pitt.edu.