Murder most fowl

Yes, there are a million things I should be doing instead of trying out the new “Blogger for Word” gizmo, but hey, I can chalk this up to software research and testing if anybody asks me to track my time for the afternoon.

The question on my mind today is, “Why do some people impose vegetarian diets on their pets?” I knew one woman who was a strict vegan – no milk, eggs, butter, cheese, etc. She had (and to my knowledge still has) some of the nicest dogs I ever met. Very well behaved and groomed. As much as it repulsed her, she went to the butcher twice a week and bought raw meat for the dogs, which she then prepared into the best organic dog food in the neighborhood. She used to make extra batches to sell to people.

I remember being at a party when the hostess lit into this woman for feeding her dogs meat. Imagine! Feeding dogs meat! The hostess had two cats that she insisted were perfectly healthy and happy on vegetarian diets. No one at the party could comment on the health of the cats because they wouldn’t come out from under the bed.

I understand just about every rationale for eating a vegetarian diet, and have even gone veggie for short periods of time. I especially believe that most people are a little too removed from the whole process of butchering to really appreciate where meat comes from. But I don’t think anthropomorphizing pets is good for the pet or the person. It’s just a way to give oneself a little moral pat on the back, at the expense of the pet. If you have so much reluctance to contribute to the horrors of the abattoir, then you really should not have a pet in the first place.

This brings me to an excellent piece I read in the Review of the Chronicle of Higher Education by U. of Washington psychology professor David Barash. He dispels the commonly believed myth that humans are the only species that hunts for sport, or kills its own kind, or makes war. In fact, all these behaviors are regularly observed in many species. Regardless of the internalized guilt we may take on as defilers of the planet, expressed most often in our culture through the stories of original sin and Cain and Abel (the basis for Barash’s piece), turning Rex and Bootsy into good little vegetarians isn’t going to fix a thing. I am reminded of the pig in the old story of the farmer who thought he could teach his swine to sing: he ended up wasting his time and pissing off the pig.