There seems to be, certainly among European populations, a conventional wisdom that pet-ownership is somehow natural and that those who decry pet-ownership are animal-haters and dog-kickers. This is not the case. But what, after all, apart from a useless parasite on human existence, is a pet?

In the first instance pets are the embodiment of a failure to connect with other members of humanity, whose emotional and intellectual complexity is rejected for the mindless obedience and meal-ticket servility of animals. Spurned by their own kind, pet-owners retreat to the sanctity of their own territory to cuddle and smooch with a deferential hostage pet, an obedient surrogate for friends, lovers, spouses and children.

Thus, secondly, pets are an outlet for an unharnessed human need to nurture. Care-giving is a natural human instinct for which many possess neither the emotional stability nor the circumstantial ability to afford to another human. Frustrated by an inability to fulfill these desires, human benevolence is all-too-regularly, and all-too-easily, unleashed on the wet-nosed, fluffy-tailed demi-gods who strut and preen, dictating attention and nutrition in return respectively for fair-weathered affection and blind obedience.

Finally, then, pets are no more than resource-consumptive 'eye-candy', pristine examples of the selfishness and vanity of humanity. As fatuous adornments and objets d'art, pets are held as moving, respirating, eating, excreting 'possessions', which inhabit an entirely humanised ecosystem dedicated to preserving the homunculistic lives of these singularly anomalous life-forms.

Types of Pet

Thus, there are, it seems, two kinds of pets - those which are allowed an element of freedom (e.g., dogs and cats), and those which, if given the opportunity, would most surely effect an escape (e.g., birds, fish, rodents, reptiles, exotic pets) and so are kept restrained.

In the case of dogs and cats, by definition pets (as human companion animals) could never have existed before mankind itself. In fact, the domestic "evolution" of dogs and cats from their respective wild counterparts has been artificially engineered by mankind for and on behalf of mankind through centuries of manipulative forced breeding, but the instinct to hunt and kill other animals remains. In this regard, Australia has introduced a curfew on domestic cats citing declines in indigenous species sufficient grounds for the legislation.

In the case of other kinds of pets, there are no "mutual companionship" benefits to be gleaned from imprisoning these creatures and any such arguments suggesting that owning, for example, either a python or a goldfish based on the premise that "animals love you for who you are and do not judge you" are fatuous and flawed. Indeed, pet-owner's all-too-familiar reliance on such a statement as justification for keeping a pet rather corroborates the original ubi supra assertion that dependence on a pet for unconditional love is both inherently selfish and/or indicative of a failure to satisfy one's own emotional needs through human interaction.

Are Pet Owners Animal Lovers?

This planet can be viewed as a living ecosystem part of which humanity itself is no more than an ingredient and in which all species need to be maintained in some sort of a harmonious balance. As such, humanity should be directing available resources to the protection of those species that are fighting for survival due to humanisation of their territory rather than willfully dedicating capital toward feeding parasites. An animal lover, as opposed to the pet-owner, will recognise the hypocrisy in filling obscene aisles brimful with tins of kitty-chunks and doggy-chum simply but perversely in order to satisfy the human ego.

Any claim to be the owner of a living, sentient creature is akin to a vindication of slavery, the bottom line being that if people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects - if they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind on equal terms. This is not biological chauvinism stressing the importance of humanity over animals, but rather conversely respect for the premise that animals do not want sentimental, sympathetic patronage but instead should be free to live their lives to the fullest: raising their young, enjoying their native environment and following their natural instincts.

Most Pets Should Never Have Been Born

Taking refugees from the animal shelters and the streets is the only laudable approach to pet-ownership indeed, providing that one is willing to provide a full-time life-long protective relationship just as one would with an orphaned child. It is the breeders and the pet-shops, those who 'manufacture' pets, thereby perpetuating a class of animals forced to rely on humans to survive that should be chopped up and put in tins.