Other human beings can be a serious disappointment at times, particularly these days. That much is obvious for people who have to cover the government and societal issues. But at least for those of us who love animals, especially dogs and cats, they can be a great comfort. Dogs are always happy to see you and cats can be fun as well, if a bit more aloof than their canine counterparts. My wife and I have kept both types of animals as companions in our home for all the decades we've been together. (There are three cats on the couch with me as I attempt to type this article.) That's why I immediately got a feeling of "uh oh" when I saw a headline in Time Magazine yesterday titled, "The Case Against Pets." Jessica Pierce describes herself as a bioethicist and a philosopher, and she attempts to make the case that people are too often causing harm to their pets while believing that the animals are happy and loving us. 

Conventional wisdom is that more pets equals more happiness. The expansion of pet keeping is a sign, the pet industry says, of an expanding love of animals and an expanding circle of overall happiness. People are happy because they have animal companions. Animals are happy because ... well, we don’t ever really ask this question. If we did, we might not like the answer.

The truth is that pet keeping often causes significant harm to animals. And as an ethicist, I am deeply alarmed about the continued growth in pet keeping around the world.

Some harms are what you might call attitudinal. In buying and selling animals, and in using them for our own gratification—whether to provide amusement or emotional fulfillment, or to make a profit—we are treating them as objects, not subjects; as commodities and not as living beings with inherent value.

The article goes on at length, expanding on the same themes seen in the excerpt above. Pierce worries that buying and selling animals like a commodity makes it "difficult for us to appreciate the experiential world of the animal from their own perspective." She also frets over housepets experiencing physical confinement, social isolation, and chronic exposure to stress, claiming that such factors can lead to poor health outcomes and shorter lifespans. And - of course - she is worried about the impact that keeping pets may have on climate change because of the "meat-heavy diets" we feed them.

Before jumping all over Ms. Pierce too heavily, I will concede that she makes a few valid points in her article. She cites the very bad outcomes that can take place in commercial pet sales, particularly when it comes to puppies and kittens. I despise puppy mills and kitten mills and personally helped our animal cruelty investigator break up a few of them while volunteering with two Humane Society shelters. In more than thirty years together we have never purchased a pet from a commercial outlet. We have only adopted from shelters. Pierce also raises objections to the market for more exotic pets. Again, I agree in some, though not all cases. Turtles and other reptiles show no interest in forming bonds with human owners and typically seem more eager to escape than interact. These things vary from human to human and between different animal species.

But with all of that said, this article honestly sounds to me as if it was written by someone who has never owned and lived with a pet in their life, particularly a dog or a cat. Unless your home is some sort of a madhouse, our dogs have always seemed exceptionally happy while our cats seem to be relaxed and completely without stress to the point of seeming as if they're in a coma for half of the day. I have no doubt that some dogs are left alone by their owners too much of the time, but our professions and lifestyle have blessed us with the ability to almost have one of us at home with them and we take our dogs with us when we travel. We arrange for a sitter to come by at least twice a day and check on and feed the cats.

As to health considerations, the suggestion that housepets may wind up with shorter lifespans is unfounded based on my research and years of conversations with veterinarians. On average, feral cats survive for two to five years. This can be caused by a combination of exposure, poor diet, lack of vaccinations and appropriate medical care, predation, or accidents. Conversely, our housecats have been fully vaccinated with regular checkups. Virtually every one of them lived for more than a decade and one "miracle cat" named Rags made it to 23 years old. The situation with dogs is similar. Wild dogs live an average of five to seven years. Our dogs have ranged ten years and above, with Mr. Basset nearly reaching 20. 

I will again agree that the commercial aspects of buying and selling pets - particularly "designer animals" - can be and are problematic in many ways. But the flaw there is with the humans who are involved in some cases, while I have met others who were completely devoted to the welfare of their charges. Once a pet finds a forever home with a responsible family, however, those concerns vanish. And the benefits flow in both directions, both from humans to pets and vice versa.