Their existence is made up
of routines to keep the innocent boy occupied, and lies to make Jack, who has never known anything other than the claustrophobic
confines of their cramped 11 × 11
cell, ignorant
of the world beyond their
prison.
Our hearts sank at the sight
of hundreds more neglected, tortured and forgotten animals, the sentient beings that their guardians had failed: bony, hollow - eyed horses staggering under their neglected frames; slowly - starving parrots, forced to live in deplorable unnatural
confines without enrichment; monkeys born into captivity, confined to their impossibly small, dank
prisons cells since the day they were born, only knowing fear and loneliness, never being able to do what comes naturally to a monkey; and chickens, rabbits, geese and so many other victims
of man.