Lazy Skiier Forces Tiny Cat 'Jesper' to Pull Her, Raising Important Questions About Animal Labor

They tell me Jesper the cat is famous for “skiing.” It is true, as Deadspin has noted before, that as a “winter leisure activity cat,” Jesper is indeed a “very good cat.”

But a new video from National Geographic depicts Jesper doing the “skiing” that has made him famous, and it depicts a disturbing scene of a fully grown adult human making a small and helpless animal do the manual labor of providing her transportation. To what end?

The act of having animals pull humans while on skis is apparently quite common in Norway, where Jesper lives—so common that it has a name, “skijoring.” Usually, as National Geographic tells us, this act is performed by a horse or dog, but here Jesper is doing it, an animal with an infinitely smaller body mass than a horse, and no one is blinking an eye. How could a person do this to a cat? And does Jesper’s owner, Aina Stormo, not know how to ski herself? Also, how is this a sport if she’s not doing it? Don’t sports people value physical activity over laziness?

Even worse, this skijoring has warped the cat’s mind into thinking it likes to swim. This is some real bullshit.

Image via screenshot/National Geographic