At the Groan, where else?
Ninety per cent of Britons think of their pet as part of the family – 16% even included them on the last census. But recent research into animals’ emotional lives has cast doubt on the ethics of petkeeping
There follows a diatribe intended to make us feel bad about our relationship with animals in our homes. Summed up best by a pithy comment below the line:
Now it’s pet-ownership? Is there no aspect of our lives which is off-limits to hectoring busybodies?
You want an answer to that?
We have two cats. The cat-flap is always unlocked so they can both leave any time they want to if they don’t like it here. For some reason they stay. We have kept cats here for 24 years and none of them have ever left home. They stay with us entirely of their own volition.
Quite so. At least two of ours came to stay and never went – of their own volition.
Ditto! We gained several cats from the lady just down the road at our last house. She never minded.
And we had one that went the other way. Nothing we could do about it. He still pops back for a visit from time to time.
My cats seem to be under the impression that they own the shambolic food monkey. Not the other way around.
Yes? And? This is the natural order of things. Do keep up…
All right, don’t call it petkeeping. Call it free board and lodging for the animal. Officially like.
Guardian reader’s comment as follows –
“Having read this article I’ve decided to pack my dog’s bag and send him on his way.
He’s outside by the back door whining to be let back in but I’ve explained to him the ethics behind my decision. I’m not sure he entirely understands, but then he eats shit and was overjoyed to see us even after we’d arranged to have his nut sack emptied. Pfft! Foolish creature can’t even say ethics. It just comes out as a sort of woofing sound.”
Yes, in general, this one is being rightly eviscerated.
I read about four paragraphs of the Guardian article as they tried to reconcile various relationships between all people and all animals, both as tribe (Family) member and prey. They don’t seem to get that our relationship with the family pet is nuanced and does not apply to all animals. Like many Guardian articles, it went rambling off for an answer which could be applied to absolutely everyone and failed miserably.
Nothing new there, then.
“She was at her local branch of PetSmart, a pet store chain in the US, buying crickets for her daughter’s gecko. The baby rats, squeaking in their plastic container, were brought in by a man she believed was offering to sell them to the store as pets or as food for the resident snakes. She didn’t ask. But Pierce, a bioethicist, was troubled.
“Rats have a sense of empathy and there has been a lot of research on what happens when you take babies away from a mother rat – not surprisingly, they experience profound distress,” she says. “It was a slap in the face – how can we do this to animals?””
“Its OK when I do it, because… errr… ummm…”
Because she is an ethicist and you are a pleb. She is all wise and knowing and is a Guardinaista.
WTF is a “bioethicist” when it’s at home ? Can anybody be one, or does one HAVE to be a Grauniad reader?