I mean, parents? Sure, both kids and dogs poop indiscriminately all over the place, start out on all fours, and talk like Scooby Doo for a while, but eventually kids get better, or at the very least, more interesting, and in theory can take care of you in your old age. (Let's see a miniature schnauzer do that.) On the other hand, if you dress them in funny sweaters, small children are more likely to bite back, which only serves you right for trying.
(Which reminds me: the fifth greatest thing about Wisconsin is nobody dresses their pets in allegedly amusing sweaters. Midwestern dogs are very clearly outdoor creatures.)
2. On a related note: I'm willing to tolerate that an indulgent owner might want to feed Fluffy or Mr. Pittypoo or whatever you wish to call your cat, various flavors of luxury cat-food; animals do have tastebuds and seem to be very good at enjoying themselves (I will not make the worthwhile if somewhat irrational point that there are probably North Korean children who don't eat nearly as good as many American cats, as there is probably a logical fallacy somewhere in there), but one wonders why anyone in their right mind would buy a cat food designed to look like party mix. Cats don't know what party mix is. Heck, I'm not sure the concept of party actually means anything to them: considering 99% of their life is party time by human standards, it would be difficult to conceive of anything else but parties.
Perhaps a better alternative is the tree sloth. Vaguely anthropomorphic and cute in a weird, gangly way, this somnolent, shambling animal spends most of its day asleep**, is known to native tribes of its home range by names derived from various forms of the words, "sleep," "eat," and "dirty," and will give pet parents a taste of the joys of raising teenagers.
*And one of them is named Franz-Josef, and it's hard not to like that.
**Actually, a recent study says sloths only sleep 10 hours a day in the wild. That being said, I am not coming up with a new name for the sin.
"In this bucket," said Stephen, walking into the cabin, "in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London and Paris combined: these animalculae - what is the matter with the sloth?" It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable, bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep. Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt the sloth, and cried, "Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
--Patrick O'Brian, H.M.S. Surprise
***
The sloth, in Brazil, is often called bicho-preguiça, or "lazy animal." The word bicho is also Spanish as well as Portuguese, one of those oddly all-purpose bits of vocabulary one finds in other languages that, while I usually associate it (perhaps wrongly) with bugs and creepy-crawlies, is flexible to apply to animals as large as buffalo. Careful, though--I was rather surprised to discover it has a different slang meaning in Puerto Rico, which, this being a (somewhat dysfunctional) family website, I have no desire to reveal here.
Also, the correct answer to the title question is: where he always is, hanging from the slowly-rotating ceiling fan.
I absolutely agree with your comments about pets. I love dogs and have owned plenty of them. But it makes me sick to watch a well-intentioned person ruin an animal by the way they treat him. They don't realize that the dog (or cat or even sloth) is NOT human and therefore should not be treated like one.
ReplyDeleteSo now you have me curious - what are the top four greatest things about Wisconsin?
ReplyDelete*memahem*
ReplyDeleteI would just like to step in on the part of people with pets and give some qualifications to an agreement with your underlying principles.
First off, let it be said that I intend to have more kids than the Duggers have even considered. I am on the precipice of getting married and realizing that dream with a young gentleman who thinks similarly, and who bought me a Boston Terrier for Christmas.
Said Boston Terrier is a shorthaired dog. This winter, as you may have heard, the midatlantic states got three feet of snow. Then two. Then three more. Then a nother foot. Then some more inches. We haven't seen this much snow in 20 years. Meanwhile, I'm trying to teach said Boston Terrier to poop outside because, let's face it, no matter how cute they are, dogs are super-gross and they carry a lot of parasites. This gets worse when you have *only* outside dogs (inside dogs are slightly more protected). So, this little shorthaired dog has to poop out in snow, deeper than he'll ever be tall. It's 23 degrees and the wind is blowing... he shivers like a chihuahua on crack. His solution: poop inside. My solution: buy him a sweater. I like mine better. Because poop is gross.
Secondly, baby animals, whilst much less important than baby people, are still babies, and lack certain capacities of adult animals. Sometimes they share certain charming, or annoying, tendencies with human babies -- a propensity to cry for mommy when left alone. So, one gets attached to one's (baby) animal, and can tend to feel like a parent. Obviously this is problematic when, as you say, one treats one's puppy/dog or kitten/cat better than people/said North Korean orphans. But animals, in a certain stage, do need a little more care.
I'm sure had I adopted an older, trained dog from the SPCA or something, the dog and I would regard each other -- "Dog," I would say in a Holly Golightly kind of way; "Person", the dog would acknowledge, followed by some kind of desire for food or scratches -- and that would be that.
But. But. The natural female tendency in me to be reduced to a melty mass of "AWWWWW" when presented with something cute, fuzzy and miniature is why gentleman find young ladies domestic and charming! Sort of!
Anyway...
Don't worry. The kids will all be named Thomas Aquinas or Xyxtus. The dog ("Anathema, sit!") would never be subjected to that kind of dignity.
The great irony about most "gourmet" pet foods, at least as cats go, is that while they have ingredients that appeal to human tastes (corn! spinach! baby carrots!) they do nothing for cats. So you buy a bag of kibble/palette of cans of some kind of food that sounds like a balanced meal *you* would eat, while managing to ignore your pets actual needs. Cats are obligate carnivores. They don't need to or want to eat vegetables (except for mine which loves beans, but I digress). What I'm trying to say, albeit in a very convoluted way, is that the "pet parent" trend is just another manifestation of our culture's nasty narcissistic streak. And I say that as the owner of a very loved feline.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous beat me to my first question.
ReplyDeleteI like to think I'm a pretty easy-going person, and I've certainly developed a passive sort of deaf-ear tolerance for much of modern society, but the phrase "fur babies" makes me feel violent.
In other unrelated news, I was lunged at by a dog named Bishop this morning ("Bishop, no!" is a strange phrase to hear shouted in that tone). Sadly I have had no recent contact with sloths of the animal sort, and so cannot add anything on that count.
It's amusing and humorous to feed your dog weird-looking treats, and therefore encourages you not to amuse yourself by experimentation as to which scraps the dog will eat willingly. (Which isn't so much a problem as the test as to whether the dog gets diarrhea afterward.)
ReplyDeleteBut there's absolutely no question in my mind that the dog likes meat treats best (chicken jerky), followed by weird taste treats (mint and herb, or peanut butter), and only then followed by generic treats which look amusing.
Donna Haraway has an intriguing little book on companion species, especially dogs.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Companion-Species-Manifesto-Significant-Otherness/dp/0971757585
While not from a Catholic perspective, it is a very thoughtful and articulate look at the joys, responsibilities, and pitfalls of having pets. One thing she says is that calling your pets children and making them stand in for human children is demeaning both to human children and to the animal. The offense against the dignity of the animal is the less obvious one; but is it not so that to treat a dog as anything other than a dog is a sort of perversion and an offense to the Creator who designed it?
"Mommie" and "Daddie" are cute ways for pet owners to refer to themselves in the home...and I draw the line there. This "parents" business smacks of pseudolegality pretending to be something real.
ReplyDeleteMark R
Fur babies? Fur babies?! I want to weep!
ReplyDeletePS. I'm pretty sure a dog named Bishop would make for a great episode of "Fr. Ted."
ReplyDeleteI am firmly convinced that the anthropomophization of the dumb beasts is, along with children's television and the Nast-Coca Cola-Montgomery Ward Santa Claus, the most effective means by which the Enemy implants a worldview inimical to traditional Christianity in the minds of children before they even make their first communion.
ReplyDeleteI'm pondering the best way to counter this, and I think I might make it a policy in my household (once my offspring are old enough to understand) to eat a "cute" animal for dinner at least once every two months. Lambs, rabbits, calves, squirrels and ducks are the most obvious and readily available choices. Were there fewer legal and economical obstacles, I'd consider eating dogs, pandas, dolphins and those gorillas that "know" sign language.
I can also commonly be overheard saying things like this to my infant son: Look, Ben Ben - see the doggie? See the doggie's immortal soul? No? That's because it doesn't have one!
You can never start too early.
DM
First thing on my Facebook this morning: "E. Loves her furbabies <3"
ReplyDeleteI think my personal fifth favorite thing about Wisconsin would be the fact that the state song is just UW's fight song with more grandiose lyrics. Which would put the many and varied Bucky Badger themed businesses up at number three or something.
I'm trying to think what the other four are; it's easy to come up with a list but ranking them is the trick. Certainly Kopp's Frozen Custard and the baked goods put out by Spring Bank Abbey (and the monks themselves) are in there somewhere!
ReplyDeleteThe New York Post had an article on why dog coats can actually be dangerous (quoting an American Vet Association spokesman)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFive is a tough call; I mean, do you count custard and cheese curds together under the heading "culinary delights" or separate them and attempt to rank them? Like choosing between one's children (or one's pets, apparently). Probably best to leave such things genteely unspecified.
ReplyDeleteIn re Bishop the dog, Father Ted is exactly the right reference... It explains why I was sort of disappointed in the lack of hijinks that followed.
Ah, O'Brian--his novels just make you long for the sea!!
ReplyDeleteBut always remember in the service to choose the lesser of two weevils!
Hm. I also need to include Fish Fries somewhere in there, too. The problem is, as Julie rightly points out, the list ends up being mostly about food, not that there's anything wrong with that but then where do you put the awesome randomness that is the Milwaukee Public Museum?
ReplyDeleteRMT--but of course! Also, let's not forget, given the subject of this posting, that the dog watches are cur-tailed!
ReplyDeleteIf you think the terrier is gross, I look forward to your maternity.
ReplyDeleteBwahaha
DM -- Mmmmm. Lamb. Deer isn't a bad idea, either, though hard to get. Bambi tastes good, if somewhat gamey.
ReplyDelete