With the recent leak of a draft potentially overturning Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court, PlayStation President Jim Ryan sent out an email asking employees to “respect differences of opinion” around abortion rights and stressing that “we owe it to each other and to PlayStation’s millions of users to respect differences of opinion among everyone in our internal and external communities.”
Then Jim Ryan fouled up this message by trying to lighten the mood by mentioning his cat’s birthday. While a cat’s birthday might be a reason to celebrate in normal situations, trying to shift the tone from abortion rights to a cat’s birthday was a clumsy attempt, and PlayStation employees and the public were infuriated. This shows that cats can cause problems even without doing a thing.