All Right, That's Enough Warm Fuzzies

I don't know if you've heard, but Turkey's in a bit of upheaval right now. Late last month, Istanbul intended to bulldoze Gezi Park, the last green space in town, and to build a shopping mall in its place. A small group of protesters came out, as one might expect for a municipal action of that nature. Normally, you'd expect the protesters to be allowed to speak their peace, followed probably by the bulldozing and construction anyway. What instead happened was that security forces violently broke up the protest. That just encouraged a bigger crowd to come out protesting the treatment of the first protesters. It's now the middle of June and things have completely blown up into a nationwide antigovernment movement against prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc warning that the military could be brought in soon.

Bad enough as it is. But as Victor Kotsev of Fast Company points out, watch as it gets worse. Because tear gas has been deployed in this conflict, and while we're all pretty clear on what happens when tear gas is deployed on humans, how many people think about what happens to the pets and other animals? Your kitty does not have a gas mask. Neither does your puppy. Especially not your birdie.

A kitty in a cast is not the thing I hoped to see when I woke up this morning.