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Keeping wild animals as pets has got to be one of the most inhumane things one can do yet some people prioritise their entertainment over a living being’s well-being. Another case of animal cruelty has emerged in Islamabad where someone’s ‘pet’ leopard escaped into the residential streets of DHA, leading to a dangerous situation. While it was captured, Pakistani Twitter addressed the root of the issue, which is the forced domestication of wild animals.

It took the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board and Capital Development Authority more than five hours to capture the leopard on Thursday. After failing to lure the animal into a cage, the IWMB had to eventually use a tranquilliser to sedate it. According to Rina Saeed Khan, who heads the wildlife board, the leopard will be kept at a rescue centre in the Rescue Centre, which used to be the Islamabad zoo.

Comedian Ali Gul Pir and artist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto shared the main takeaway from the fiasco, which is to not keep wild animals as pets in the first place.

There is a serious lack of empathy in how people deal with animals here.

Common sense would suggest that it escaped from a zoo or a sanctuary but, no, that would actually make sense. We must report people who have no empathy for animals.

On the lighter side of things, there were, of course, memes.

We feel this.

Yes, it is as absurd as it sounds.

Please be kind to animals — they have rights that should be respected too. While we’re joking about it, the fact of the matter is that keeping animals in unsuitable environments is animal cruelty.