Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Zhang Zian’s brows furrowed, understanding that [Collapse the World] was hiding more behind those words, so he decided against going downstairs to clean, instead choosing to reply.
[The Hottie]: The world’s still in the state of collapse? What do you mean?
The other replied quickly.
[Collapse the World]: Did you not pay attention to the news?
Zhang Zian deadpanned. He’s been busy with his small animal protection bill, π’s novel and the Holy Cat Statue, he really didn’t have time to take note of the society’s news. Could it be that something really did happened?
[The Hottie]: I’ve been busy, what news are you talking about?
[Collapse the World]: Right now, including Binhai City, there had been cases of dog poisoning with Isoniazid all around the country, and they are getting more and more common. I heard that you’re a pet shop owner, you shouldn’t need me to explain what is isoniazid, right?
Zhang Zian suck in a cold breath.
Of course he knows what isoniazid is. It’s a very effective drug used to treat tuberculosis, first sold on the markets in 1952, just after World War II.
Since tuberculosis has been effectively contained and controlled around the world, and is no longer a huge threat to human’s life, there are aims to completely eradicate tuberculosis around the world within the next few years. Therefore, isoniazid became widely known, not because of its abilities to cure tuberculosis, but because of its potent poisonous characteristic to dogs, just like arsenic, and would be used by people to poison the dogs.
Very little people used to know about the drug, but the era of the internet brought on the information boom. Anything and everything would be spread between people at breakneck speed.
Zhang Zian knows about isoniazid, and knows about the fact that people use it to kill dogs, but he didn’t know that it has been happening frequently recently.
[The Hottie]: I know about isoniazid. As to the dog poisoning cases, can you tell me more? I haven’t been catching up on news.
[Collapsing the World]: I had reprogrammed the internet bug that I made earlier, and changed the “Related phrases” from ‘cat torture’ to ‘dog poisoning’, do you need me to send you another copy? Or can you reprogramme it yourself?
It’s not the time to pretend to be amazing, and Zhang Zian obediently replied, “Send me a copy.”
He quickly received an email with an attachment.
[Collapse the World]: I’ll explain it simply, I only knew this after I had analysed the figures. In the beginning, dog poisoning cases were only sporadically happening, and neither did they bring in much attention. But, after related news had been reported, a lot of people had learned that isoniazid could poison dogs, and they seemed to act as though they had found new land. They started to purchase isoniazid to poison dogs, and the entire situation spiralled out of control.
[Collapse the World]: The dog poisoning and cat torture cases seemed to be similar, but they have definite differences. The huge scale of cat torture started out from Binhai City, and spread all over the country. Since we had experience from the cat torture cases, I thought the dog poisoning cases were similar too, starting from one city and spreading around the country. So, I tried using many statistical tools to analyze the data that we know about the dog poisoning cases. But, the disappointing thing was that there’s no pattern at all, and are all just happening spontaneously… Or maybe, there’s a pattern, but I just hadn’t found it yet.
After reading their email, he understood the gravity of the situation. To compare the dog poisoning cases with the mass cat torture situation that they had back then, it must mean that it was huge.
The thing came too unexpectantly, he has absolutely no idea how to even begin tackling the situation, he can only try to understand it after his emotions settled.
[The Hottie]: Why are you telling me this?
[Collapsing the World]: Because you were very concerned with the cat torture situation, so I thought you would want to know about this too. I was curious too, you said that the cat torture situation would be resolved soon, and it really did happen. If you were to call this a coincidence, I wouldn’t believe you either. I would love to know if you can resolve this situation like you did with the cats. Even though I’m a homebody, I am still a pet lover, and a nosy person.
Zhang Zian couldn’t help but laugh at the email.
The one that settled the cat torture cases was Vladimir and its Meow Meow Doctrine Punch, he doesn’t have such powerful abilities. [Collapsing the World] has too much unreasonable expectations of him.
Besides, the cause of the huge scale cat torture was the Holy Cat Statue that revived after thousands of years.
To fight a human, kill their horse, To fight the bandits, capture their king. As long as they captured the Holy Cat Statue, the entire cat torture situation would naturally die down with it. The remaining cases were unable to be helped, and could only wait for the country’s animal protection laws to be more complete.
The dog poisoning cases… could there be a similar cause to it as well?
From [Collapsing the World]’s words, even though they can’t completely rule out the possibility, the chances are low.
That’s troublesome.
At it’s roots, as long as the small animal protection act is passed, all the cat torture and dog poisoning cases could be solved as easily as a hot knife through butter — as a normal citizen, who dares to go against the laws of the country?
But, the small animal protection act is still in its proposal stages, and there’s still a long way to go before it is officially passed as a law. If they only counted on the law to be passed, all of the dogs might have been poisoned to death before it was illegal to do so…
Zhang Zian couldn’t help the feeling of helplessness that welled up again. Both the criticism of π’s novel and the dog poisoning cases were well out of his jurisdiction and control, it’s a situation that the country has to solve.
But, the culprit for π’s novel’s criticism was only one person, but they wouldn’t be so lucky for the dog poisoning cases.
Following the increase in quality of life across the country, more and more people are getting pets.
Up till 2014, out of all of the families in the city, 30 million of them have dogs, that’s 7% of the entire country’s population. There’s one household with dogs in every 14 households.
The China’s pet market is growing at a rapid rate of 12% per year too, and would soon take first place in the entire world.
Right now, the biggest conflict for the pet market is the growing amount of dogs and the unthoughtful actions of the dog walkers. Some of them don’t leash their dogs, allowing them to pee and poo everywhere, allowing them to bark as they wish, or even bite when they want to. They have greatly influenced other’s lives, and caused hatred against dogs and dog owners in their heart.
Some people might have been scared by dogs, or even harrassed by them previously, or they might just purely not like how the dog owners do things, but they didn’t dare do anything to the dog owners, so they can only deal with the dogs.
But, their target for revenge might not always been dogs with a bad track record, many innocent dogs and dog owners were dragged into it as well.
