Life might have already left the petrified cat’s body when she was on the verge of drowning in the water tank of a Mumbai-based housing society at the hands of a 15-year-old girl. Fortunately, the cat was saved when a security guard of the building reached the spot in the nick of time; or there would have been blood on her hands. The incident raised an alarm in the building and the teenager was given the nickname “psycho”, Seema Hingorrany, a clinical psychologist tells us.

But the thought of killing the cat was not the girl’s first instinct. It developed gradually. Once she hit a cat for fun while playing with it, and it felt surprisingly satisfying. From then on it became her coping mechanism. Hingorrany says her parents knew of their child’s behaviour, but thought there was nothing unusual about it. But her actions only got severe. “People normalise it when a child pelts stones or hits an animal, but often there is a reason behind such actions, mostly trauma,‘’ says Hingorrany adding, “if we don’t address the reasons, the actions become harsher”.