Living plants and animals in the wild and in the laboratory should always be treated with respect. True/False

Why should they? What do you think?

Funny story. I did a minor in biology and one of the fun courses I took was a zoology anatomy class. During which we were give a dog fish (small shark), and a cat (Meow) to dissect during the semester. The point of these dissections was to learn some of the start differences between different kingdoms of animals. What was impressed upon us was that the cat could have been someone's pet. It could have been that one thing that helped a person through a very hard time in their lives. It was caught and euthanized after trying to find it's owner.

Given who or what that cat could have been, what do you think our TA was trying to tell us?

Lets say you were the plant or animal in the lab. What would you want?