An opinion on pets

This topic gets tossed at me frequently, “Maura, you need a dog/cat.” No, I actually don’t. As I have mentioned before I am HIGHLY allergic to most breeds of both. I had a cat that lived with us for about ten years and I lived on antihistamines the whole time–those are not good for you long term. Beyond the allergy I think keeping pets is inhumane. I can hear from here people going “inhumane? How?” I’m glad you asked.

Let’s start with Canis Familiaris, also commonly known as a dog.

Dogs in their wild version need amazingly huge ranges to roam and hunt. That alone means they need a lot of time to just walk, and run to stay healthy–sort of like Homo Sapiens. The typical suburban house sits on ⅛ of an acre and the typical urban yard here in St. Louis is about the size of a two car garage…nowhere near the vast swaths of land a dog needs.

Now let’s look at how the average dog spends its day:

Early morning a human will open its crate, let it out, open the back door and either the dog darts out bladder bursting, bowls, in an uproar–ever been on a long drive and had to go desperately? The dog quickly empties itself in pure desperation, then comes back inside. Back inside it scarfs down some food, slurps up a bunch of water, then is told to get back in its crate–not a normal response but a conditioned response usually beat into it either physically or electrically. The humans make their own mad dash around, and leave the house. Now what does the dog do all day? The same thing a human in solitary confinement does, nothing, stares at the walls, and we have to assume hopes for a better life or death as that is where depression leads a human. The human(s) are gone nine or ten hours at work, come home, let the dog out again, make dinner, let the dog back in, feed the dog, do their chores, and assume the dog is “just so in love” with them when the dog is just happy to be out of that 30 inch by 30 inch by 42 inch, prison cell! We know dogs get depressed, I mean why else would we have antidepressants for dogs? If the human gets home at six o’clock and goes to bed at ten that’s maybe four hours out of 24 that the dog is out of its crate. Now it is possible the humans let the dog spend the night out of the crate so it may have ten hours out of 24 where it is not locked in solitary confinement.

Now Felis Domesticus or house cat.

Again, in the wild cats need acres and acres of land to hunt. Solitary they make do with rodents and birds. In a pack they will bring down significantly larger game. Outside cats play utter havoc on the ecosystem as need to or not they hunt…it’s a fact that it is in their firmware to hunt and we can’t take that out of them. Cats are climbers because generally speaking they are ambush predators and this is why they climb furniture, appliances, curtains, and “hide” in boxes to camouflage themselves.

Now cats usually get the run of the house when the human(s) are gone, but they are still a confined hunter. We train their natural instinct to hide their waste into a litter box so we don’t even have to let them out of the house. Their prey sends its death knell via the can opener or the sound of the pop-top being ripped open. Cats do get depressed as well but we rub a special cream on their ears to ease the pain of being confined in a large, fancy, prison cell that humans call a house.

Basically the same issues apply to every animal humans keep as pets. In every instance we put an animal in a box, then leave it totally alone while we go about our life until it is convenient for us to take it out of its box. We imprison so many animals whose only crime was to be born.

So to me keeping a pet is inhumane because none of us would want to spend our entire life in a box.

Maura out