Living in Petopia
by Sarah Boyd

Cohabitating with Pets in the 21st Century

Ownership is the issue, pure and simple. There have long been jokes made in the pet lovers’ community about who belongs to whom: Does the pet belong to the person or does the person belong to the pet? Comedians can make tongue-in-cheek statements all day long about the "master" waiting hand and foot on the "pet", while said pet lives a life of leisure and sheds on our very best furniture, but it’s a timely question.

Somewhere along the way, somebody with Political Influence figured out that animals are sentient beings. (Having Political Influence and being even modestly observant are often mutually exclusive, but in this case they must have converged - go figure!) What a discovery! Those of us who ever looked into the eyes of our animal companions are still laughing over that "scientific discovery." Strange how we humans deny the existence of knowledge unless we can define, quantify and prove it. From one perspective, that makes us less intelligent than our non-human friends: They use their senses to gather information, decide if it’s important enough to pay attention to, and never waste time trying to decide if it really happened.

Dogs demonstrate this: (sniff) "I smell medium-rare beef. I know it’s there, on that plate, and I will get it in my mouth." There is no hesitation to decide if he/she was having an olfactory hallucination - Bam! - My steak is history.

Human beings, on the other hand, look into an animal’s eyes and see intelligence and goal-directed calculation; then spend the next fifty years researching what they knew to be true in an instant. That certainly makes me feel intellectually superior; how about you?

Be that as it may, we bipeds with the opposable thumbs and superior societies have finally come to the conclusion that all sentient beings have rights. If you watch Animal Planet at all, you will know that. We designate police officers to enforce those rights and elevate those officers to the status of heroes for defending the ethical and moral treatment of animals. Even law schools have added coursework on the rights of animals for the benefit of aspiring young lawyers.

Our language is changing as well: We no longer hear pets referred to as "things" or "it," but rather as "he" or "she," (Except in cases where gender is uncertain and ascertaining it is undignified to say the least.) In such cases, the term "he or she" can be used to indicate the unknown animal’s gender. A careful study of the creature’s habits should provide useful information in these cases: Observe carefully, and whichever gender you decide that the animal must be - it is almost certainly the other one. If that method leaves you in doubt, you can do what I did: Take the animal to the vet (in our case it was a pet rat) and ask her to neuter the little darling so you won’t have a plethora of rats in a short time. If she neuters him, then you know you were right. If (as in our case) she calls back and tells you that all the veterinarians in the office have consulted with one another and gone on-line for affirmation, and they can’t find any testicles at all, then you can rest assured that you have a female. The added benefit to this method is the enjoyment derived from the mental image of one tiny little rat all anesthetized and laying stretched out on the operating table and four or five adults crowding over her looking for testicles that aren’t there.

In all the years that I have shared my home with animal companions (and that is a long, long history) there has never been a question of ownership. Nobody owns anybody. We live together; cohabitate. My mother would refer to it as “living in sin” - and frequently has referred to it as such. (I think “sin” can be read as “dirt” or “dust bunnies”) At the present time, I share my home with eight dogs, two pet rats, one leopard gecko and a fish. (That’s not counting my mate and the two bipeds that call me Mom.) My house is one of the most "sinful" houses I’ve ever seen. It is overrun with sin. There is sin piled up in the corners. Sometimes I step in sin in the middle of the night!

Amid all this sinfulness, we are all considered as equals. I have my jobs - jobs that the pets cannot do. They have their jobs, which I cannot do; like protecting our fenced-in back yard from possums and skunks. They do these jobs at great personal risk - as anyone who has ever been sprayed in the face by a skunk could attest - and they deserve my gratitude and care.

This monthly column will offer (hopefully) some kind of helpful information on a variety of topics concerning pet care, while reflecting a bit of humor on life here in "Petopia."