We get hundreds of emails every week begging us to do something to "stop the cruelty and abuse of kittens going on at the website called bonsaikitten.com", where it describes how to stuff kittens into glass containers to warp their bodies into the shape of the container. Bonsaikitten.com offers to sell visitors a custom-shaped kitten -- the site says "typical wait time for a fully shaped Bonsai Kitten is 3 to 4 months" -- but the site does not list prices or a mailing address for where to send money orders. Its all part of the scheme to make the site believable.
This website is a JOKE. It has been around for several years now. The FBI has investigated this website and its creators, and have found no evidence of any kind to suggest that actual abuse has been committed. Kittens are NOT really being grown in glass jars. The photos were manipulated using photo editing software by graduate students at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The site is protected by the U.S. Constitution, under the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech, regardless of how stupid or disgusting you may find it.
Please remember that you should not believe everything you see on the Internet or in email. If you are unsure whether something being passed around is real or not,you should check the Urban Legends website, The Urban Legend Reference Pages or the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup before you promote or forward incorrect information. Although its not impossible for a hoax to not be listed in these resources, a vast majority of them are. At the very least please do a few searches in Internet search engines to see if you can find out more information.
The THIRD result in Google.Com when doing a search on "bonsai kitten" begins the incredibly long list websites that explain that this is a hoax. No offense, but if you found OUR website, you could have found any one of the hundreds of websites that explains that the site is an elaborate (and convincingly done) spoof.
By forcing us to finally create this FAQ page because of the sheer volume of emails we get every week about the bonsai kitten website, the public is ONLY encouraging them. Same goes for all the petitions people pass around, etc. By continuing to make a big deal out of the bonsai kitten website, you are giving the site creators exactly what they want and are in fact keeping the hoax alive - not to mention wasting time and bandwidth.
By doing a little homework in situations like this, you will save yourself much anxiety and you will allow animal welfare organizations to focus on legitimate issues.
Help out the hard-working animal welfare and animal rights organizations by forwarding this page - or any of the links below - to people who forward you the hoax email or website site, or post them on message boards, etc. Educate others that it IS a joke, even if its not a joke you (or they) don't find very funny. And most importantly - ask others NOT to contact animal welfare and animal rights organizations about the bonsai kitten site. They already know about it. It is unfortunate that almost all of the larger animal welfare/rights organizations now have to have a special link (much like this one) to prevent people from emailing them about it. They know that adding a page dedicated to the bonsai kitten website on their organization's website only serves to encourage the site's creators. We held out as long as we could, but it just got to be too much.
We are always grateful for people who are concerned and compassionate towards animals and would always prefer that people care too much about putting an end to animal cruelty than too little, however in order to utilize everyone's time most wisely, a certain amount of discretion and common sense has to be applied. Your cooperation on this is sincerely appreciated.
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