‘Cat bin lady’ Mary Bale is lampooned in video, online game, fake Twitter account

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A Conventry, England, radio station has created a parody video wherein a human-sized cat (actually a person in a Sylvester suit) dumps a woman in a trash bin.

It’s just one of the references on the Intertubes to Mary Bale, the woman whose much-publicized ‘split second of misjudgement’ (her words) that ended with a 4-year-old tabby cat named Lola stuck in a trash bin for 15 hours before her owners found and rescued her. Bale is quickly becoming a meme; it’s only a matter of time before someone splices the closed-circuit surveillance video of her dumping Lola in the bin with Keyboard Cat. (That is, if someone hasn’t done that already.)

U.K. tabloid the Sun has created an online game modeled on ‘Whack-a-Mole’ entitled ‘Whack-Cat-Woman,’ in which users are encouraged to close trash bins with Bale inside. And a fake Twitter account, @catbinlady, has sprung up, perhaps inspired by the popularity of another fake Twitter account set up in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, @BPGlobalPR. Sample tweet from the person we must reiterate is not the real Mary Bale: ‘Just passed a shoe shop. Threw one of the sample shoes outside on top of a bus. Why do I do these things?’

Meanwhile, the real Mary Bale has apologized publicly and says she is cooperating with an investigation by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As of yet, it’s unclear whether she’ll face charges, but an RSPCA spokesperson told the Guardian that ‘a full file is being compiled and will be sent for review by the prosecutions department.’

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: MerciaCoventry via YouTube