cat Photo: Weibo

 
The production team behind the hot drama Marvellous Women issued a statement on Monday on its official Sina Weibo account expressing that they have "reported" the netizen who they claim damaged their reputation by accusing the drama of electrocuted a cat for a mere scene shoot. 

The accusations of animal abuse started when viewers spotted a scene, in which a white cat's death looked too real to have been faked. In the scene, the cat in question been poisoned struggles on the floor as blood comes from its mouth. The realistic depiction caused many viewers to wonder if the production actually poisoned a cat for the scene. 

On November 26, the drama crew posted a "declaration" on Sina Weibo explaining that the cat's struggles were created by using a string to pull the cat's foot, and that the blood around its mouth was prop blood made from edible syrup. 

It also shared a behind-the-scenes video, which shows the cat, named Mimi, alive and licking its mouth. However, some netizens claim that the video has been edited by software after the incident. 

The topic has earned more than 460 million views on Sina Weibo and the production team has continued providing "evidence" to debunk accusations of the cat murder.

The team's latest update on Monday was a video that shows Mimi returning to her owner. However, these moves have apparently not been able to gain the trust of netizens. 

Shi Wenxue, a cultural critic, said that the show has already been found guilty in the court of public opinion, so will have a hard time formulating a defence. 
 
"Injury is not the focus of netizens' complaints now since injury to humans or animals cannot always be avoided when shooting TV dramas or movies. What they are against is 'torturing and killing,' which is inhumane, even when it comes to animals,"added Shi.

This is not the first time that a production has come under fire for animal abuse.

Prior to this, another show from Marvellous Women's  producer Yu Zheng, Story of Yanxi Palace (2018), faced criticism for a scene in which actors played with a stuffed dead parrot that was a national secondary protected animal. 

Another outrageous example is the 1993 film Dog King, during the filming of which the crew blew up a real patrol dog to film a scene. The film became the center of controversy as citizens called for more care to be taken when including animals in TV and film. 

"This to me is a lack of ethical awareness and a moral bankruptcy for the industry workers. There should be more strict ethical regulations to cope with such issues," Wang Jue, an animal rights activist, told the Global Times. 

The major solution to prevent such controversies in the future is to use digital special effects, Shi said.

"The production team of the series explained that they had used practical special effects to shoot the scene, but to prevent such controversies about hurting animals, they should completely use CG to deal with an animal's death scene,"said Shi. 

Marvellous Women started with a good reputation when it debuted in early November, but currently has only a 2.9/10 on Chinese rating platform Douban following to the incident occurred.