Obligate Carnivore: Cats, Dogs & What it Really Means to be Vegan by Gillen Jed

Author:Gillen, Jed [Gillen, Jed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-28T05:00:00+00:00

The Aching-Ass Equation There is currently a movement afoot to replace the words “pet” and “owner” in the legal language of laws and statutes, as well as in the common vernacular of everyday speech, with “companion animal” and “guardian”.The idea is that improved treatment of animals will logically follow if we retrain our minds to think of them as individuals with inherent worth instead of as our property.

I’m not so sure I have a big problem with “pet”. A “pet project” is a good thing, and “pet” is kind of an olde time term of endearment, along the lines of “dear” or “honey” (or is “honey” supposed to be offensive to vegans too?). I really don’t see much of a negative connotation there; I just think it gets a bad rap because of its false pairing with “owner” (while the true, highly offensive, partner of “owner” is “possession”, not “pet”).Also, I’m not convinced that “companion animal” is a great choice for a replacement. If we call them “companion” animals,doesn’t that sort of define them solely as they relate to us, as if serving as companions to humans is their whole purpose for existing? This has a certain Rainbow Bridgeishness27 to it with which I am not entirely comfortable.

Insofar as this movement seeks to strike down the word “owner”, however, I support it 1,000,000% and in my opinion it would be difficult to find a more thoroughly appropriate substitute than “guardian”. Right alongside “guardian angel”, my immediate association with this word is from when I was an elementary school student. Maybe this is familiar to other people as well: at the bottom of every form we had to bring home to get signed—permission slips, report cards, etc.—there was a signature line, labeled not simply “Parent”, but always “Parent/Guardian”.

“Parent/Guardians” were the adults you lived with, who packed your lunch, paid for your clothes, yelled at you when you got bad grades, took you to the doctor when you were sick, loved you, guilt-tripped you, picked you up at the mall, embarrassed you in front of your friends.“Parents”, of course, referred to the people whose sweaty lovemaking had directly brought you into existence. Most of us had at

27 there is a very famous poem called “Rainbow Bridge” that many people look to for comfort when a companion has died:“There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so that they can run and play together.There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by...” Doggie Heaven sounds really nice until you start looking at the strict and, I would say, arbitrary, entrance requirements:“When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge” (italics mine). How unbelievably arrogant! Where

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