Animals are pure innocence – humans are not. Children can be cruel – children grow up to be killers, sociopaths etc. if you ever had a pet – then u know that the love they give u is unconditional – so the idea of hurting them is repulsive – finally – humans are the only animal that will torture, kill, destroy another living being – for fun.

P.S. What’s the name of the book where the cat survives the shipwreck and becomes the heroine’s companion on the island? It sounds cute, and I feel like the author and I may be kindred souls when it comes to cats.

Those are good series to source–thanks Pupplez!

I’m writing a story for that age group too; about dogs that climb trees. Kinda weird, but I am teaching my own dog how to climb and he’s pretty good, despite weighing only 9 pounds! Anyway, I usually just go into as few details as possible, like: “…grabbing the animal and cleanly snapping it’s neck.” (from the book I’m writing). You should also read some other books about animals like the ‘Survivors’ or ‘Warriors’ series, both by Erin Hunter.

It just now crossed my mind—remember Disney’s “Bambi”? Huge classic. Animals die. I think it is all how you do it, not that you shouldn’t do it.

I admit to being very curious about what kind of help a mouse can provide in a battle. 🙂

And you’re quite right. A battle where none of the good guys get hurt, where none of the characters we like has to sacrifice anything, is likely to be flat and predictable. If animals go into such a situation and come back out without a scratch, I want to know how this is happening – especially if the human characters are treated realistically and get hurt.

Hi Mary, thanks for commenting!

Come to think of it, I’ve only read one book where someone was responsible for needlessly killing/hurting an animal and got away with it. That would be The Plague Dogs, where the head researcher carries out experiments like sealing a monkey into a sensory-deprivation chamber (if you Google “Harlow’s pit of despair”, you’ll see similar real-life experiments intended to simulate clinical depression in monkeys).

With that one exception, author-guided karma gets everyone who harms an animal, though in A Song of Ice and Fire, it took five books. And will hopefully continue for a few more.

Agreed. Before going into detail about the skinning and burning, the writer should ask himself/herself, what does that accomplish? Probably in the splatterpunk subgenre, shock value would work, but outside it, what do the details provide that Fluffy’s death alone did not?

That’s one reason the dog’s death in Dean Koontz’s The Servants of Twilight worked for me. Because the cultists killed the little boy’s dog (believing the boy to have evil powers), the hero took the boy to the pound and got him another dog – which turned out to be spookily identical to the first one. Later, the hero couldn’t find the corpse of the first one where it was supposed to be buried. Very nice touch.