Animals and Us

The last time I wrote one of these little articles I blathered on about giving every single kid in the country two free years of college. It was serious stuff and it caused a few folks to question my reasoning (impeccable as always) and disagree with me in very civil tones. We have some high toned discussions, my readers and me. Since that essay was posted I’ve been casting about for another subject to address. One of my good friends suggested that I write about the move towards legalized, medically sanctioned and assisted murders. But I’m avoiding that one for now because we really shouldn’t even need a discussion on so heinous a subject. So instead of that I’ve decided to really kick up the dust by talking about pets.

First of all let me say that I like animals. Dogs are great. Cats are okay. Little fish swimming around a nice tank are just fine. Caged birds are questionable, as are snakes and other critters that lay around in glass boxes waiting for a handful of crickets or a juicy living mouse. Rodents in cages can be amusing but ever since I had to do some demolition work on a building that had drop ceilings completely infested with mice and rats, I’ve been unable to see those kinds of animals as friends of mankind. (Or womankind either) But, friends and neighbors, the American passion for having pets and treating them like people is, I’m sorry to say, not a healthy trend. But what is even worse is the tendency of folks to acquire animals that they treat worse than animals.

A good dog is a joy to own. They deserve to be treated kindly, fed properly, exercised regularly and appreciated for what they are. But a dog is an animal. The smartest dogs are still incapable of a higher level of thought. But some folks have anthropomorphized dogs to a degree that is actually insulting to the dignity of the canine species. I’m talking about all those silly and sad pictures that get posted on social networking sites by the thousands every single day. The attempts at humor or emotional manipulation done with those photos would be embarrassing to all of those dogs, if they had the ability to get their own page and look at that crap all day long. Of course some folks use human children in the same way. Those kids are destined to need psychological counseling by the time they reach their teens. There are people who take their dogs to doggy psychologists but I’ve never seen any improvement after those treatments. Usually it’s the owners of those poor pups that need the shrinkage.

And cats are used in the same manipulative way. Some poor kitty does something cute, the owner takes a picture adds a clever caption and sends the photo out on FaceBook or some other site. All the cat lovers say “Awwww!” All the folks who are indifferent to feline behavior say “What the hell, another damn cat picture!” Not me of course, I love cats. But I still feel that those cats are abused and maligned by what their owners do with all those unauthorized photos. Actually I guess the authorization is implicit in the fact that the cats are chattel property held by the humans. But I’ve never seen a cat who would accept slavery without a fight. They just ignore those conventions anyway. Cats operate on a different plane of existence from humans. We all know that.

So let’s quit trying to turn cats and dogs into four legged humans. Give them the dignity they deserve. I was talking to some people the other day about reincarnation and we got around to the subject of what we’d like to “come back” as. Not one person wanted to come back as a human. The number one preference was cat, followed closely by dog. A couple of the odder folks in the discussion group selected rocks or trees and such. One fellow wanted to come back as crabgrass because that stuff lives forever no matter what you do to kill it.

Okay. Be nice to animals but remember they are still only animals.

Now have a fine day.