A Decent Life_Morality for the Rest of Us by Todd May

Author:Todd May [May, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780226609744
Google: N_CIDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 022660974X
Goodreads: 41591164
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2019-01-23T03:07:30+00:00

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Widening the Circle: Nonhuman Animals

We have a cat that lives with us. To put the matter in the traditional way, we own a cat. The idea that one should claim to “own” a living animal, and a fairly intelligent one at that, has come under some scrutiny recently, and justly so. There were humans who were once considered property, and now in most parts of the world that practice is considered barbaric. For analogous although obviously not exactly the same reasons, associating the idea of ownership with intelligent animals is receiving its fair share of scrutiny. So let me just say this: we have a cat that lives with us.

Putting it this way is not exactly right, though. It implies that the cat lives in the house with us, sharing our living quarters. But he doesn’t do that. The cat, Sammy by name, lives outside our house. Well, outside and often under it. He hangs around the abandoned tree house in the backyard, sunbathes on our little deck, comes inside twice a day for breakfast and dinner before whining to return to his spacious abode outside, and generally makes himself at home in the local neighborhood.

Sammy lives outside because I am allergic to cats. Not wildly so. I can have him wandering in and out of the house at meal time without difficulties. But if he were to live inside with us then I would spend much of the day wiping my nose and eyes and perhaps scratching myself in much the same way Sammy does. So his living outside suits both of us.

You might wonder why a family with a member who is allergic to cats ever got one in the first place. I wonder the same thing. One day the rest of my family went out to a shelter and arrived home with a kitten whose name I was informed was Sammy. This was a surprise to me, since not only am I allergic to cats, I don’t really like them. In fact, in general I don’t like pets. I’m fine with things like fish as long as they’re in small fish tanks and I don’t have any responsibility for feeding them or cleaning the tank. Anything that lives outside a small contained area away from where I’m likely to sit, however, is something I would generally rather not be around. So I share any puzzlement you might have about how Sammy showed up in my house one day.

Although I do not like pets—and moreover natural environments are, to my mind, mostly to be avoided—I am mostly a vegetarian. At home I am strictly vegetarian, although when we go out I’ll make the moral descent into eating fish. It took me many years to become vegetarian. I tried to do so times without number during my twenties, thirties, and forties. I think my metabolism finally slowed down enough so that I could lose the meat cravings and just retain a soft nostalgia for the taste of a cheeseburger.

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