Should you own a pet? Should anyone?

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Jordan Heath Rawlings If you’ve ever heard a blooper reel from this show, or if you’ve ever paid really close attention to the background noises during interviews, then you have met my cat Pav. She will turn three this year. We got her as a kitten. Yes. During the pandemic, like so many of you. And she likes to be involved in whatever’s going on. How did she get back? The cat got all the way back to jump down again, but she didn’t go anyway. There you go. Sorry about that. It’s always something. Um, I mean, hold on a second. I’m gonna get this toy away from my cat. Who’s gonna ruin our recording hair? One second. It would not be a big story episode without an appearance by the cat.

Pav Jordan Heath-Rawlings’ family cat’s AI persona This guy called me a house cat. I just want to eat lasagna.

Stefanie Phillips I’m loving her appearances.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I think those clips are objectively cute. They’re adorable even. But now I am a little worried that they are a sign of something darker. You see, Pav is an indoor cat. We live in a busy neighbourhood in Toronto. There are coyotes in the park nearby, and I don’t want her to kill all the birds that she likes to mutter at through the window screen. And I thought I’d made my peace with that and she had too, until I learned about ethical pet ownership. And more importantly, until I learned that the kind of behavior you heard in those clips can indicate severe boredom, and I learned how cruel pet ownership can be even casually. Without the owners realizing it now, before you flood our inbox and our voicemail with calls for my head, please understand I have owned pets my entire life. I care for them and love them and spoil them and would do anything for them. So that’s why I had to think so hard about this and why I wanted you to hear about it. So should I really have a pet? Should you, should anyone? I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Get outta here, Kat. Kenny Terrell is a staff writer for Vox with a focus on animal welfare. Hello, Kenny.

Kenny Terrell Thanks so much for having me, Jordan.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You’re very welcome. I’m gonna start off with a very simple question. You focus on animal welfare, and yet by reading your piece, you seem to hate kitties and puppies.You monster. Why?

Kenny Terrell You know? I got a few responses, uh, on that same tone, uh, when I published my article, the Case Against Pet Ownership. And, um, actually I am a lifelong animal lover. I grew up with, uh, a cat and fish and hamsters, and I’ve lived with dogs for, uh, over the last 10 years. Um, and it’s actually my love for animals that really made me start to question the whole endeavour of keeping pets. Um, you know, I adopted, uh, my dog, Evie, six months into the pandemic, like so many other people.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell And as time went on, you know, I just had this question nine at me is Evie just bored and frustrated for so many hours of the day while I am, you know, typing away at my computer, ignoring her, her begging for attention. And so that sent me down this rabbit hole of, uh, this huge body of literature that also just questions this norm we have around pet keeping in the US and globally. I’m very glad to hear that you’re a pet owner. Um, I’m a lifelong pet owner as well. Um, interestingly enough, We grew up with cats, but they were outdoor cats.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Now that, uh, I have a family of my own, we have a cat, but she is an indoor cat because I’ve learned about all the things she will kill and destroy if I let her outside. And we can talk about that a little later. But maybe first, as we just sort of set the stage here, tell me about, uh, an author named Jessica Pierce and the case for Ethical Pet Ownership. And maybe begin with, you know, some of the most blatant examples of what we’d consider when we think of that.

Kenny Terrell Yeah, so when I went down this rabbit hole of worrying that my dog, Evie, was just so bored all day, it led me to this bioethicist and author named Jessica Pierce, uh, who has written about dogs and cats and, and pets for, for years. And her book runs Spot Run. The Ethics of PET Keeping really opened my mind, uh, on this issue and you know, she kind of starts off with some of the most blatant forms of animal abuse that I think, you know, any, any decent listener would condemn. You know, issues like animal hoarding, puppy mills, dog fighting, physical abuse, even bestiality. And, you know, some of these, uh, problems are more common than you’d think.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell I mean, just as an example, There was a message board, um, for people who, uh, were into bestiality and they had over a million members before they were shut down. Wow. And there have also been surveys of college students asking them, have you ever abused an animal or have you witnessed animal cruelty? And a pretty surprising number of them have said yes. Now, you know, there’s not good data.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell But I think. Just off the bat, there are some really serious engrave, human abuses done to our cats and dogs that I think any, you know, pet owner would agree or wrong that are more common than we might think. Yeah. And that’s how most people would understand bad pet owners or people who should never have pets. Right. Um, abuse, dog fighting, all that kind of stuff.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And, and that’s really understandable. But since we’re talking probably to pet owners here, uh, who deeply love their pets, Tell me about the edge cases. Like I, I mentioned my cat is now an indoor cat. She is indoors all day. Am I a bad pet owner because she’s stuck indoors?

Kenny Terrell Well, I don’t think you’re a bad pet owner because she’s stuck indoors. I think that just the constraints. Of modern life, make it really hard to give a cat or a dog a good life. And I think in the case of your cat, you know, I, I would assume that your cat, and I mean, I, I, I may not be right, every cat is different, but cats and dogs and, and all animals, including humans, really like to be outdoors, to be able to use their senses. And cats really like to hunt. And smell.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell And when you know your cat is indoors all day, they can’t do that. But if you let your cat outdoors, well they could easily get run over. They could spread or catch a disease. They could kill birds and other wildlife. And so this is just, you know, one of many examples where, you know, we may be inflicting suffering on our animals by keeping them indoors all day, but letting them outdoors all day isn’t a great solution either.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What are some of the other kinds of things that we might not notice or even be aware of, or maybe even think we’re doing a great job for these animals, but if you look at how it impacts them, might be considered neglect or even cruelty, right?

Kenny Terrell So Jessica Pierce, you know, in her book, run Spot Run. She highlights those more blatant forms of abuse, but then also says, Hey, if, if we actually look under the hood of this very sunny, wholesome narrative we have around pet keeping, we might find some ugly stuff, maybe even some things we could be guilty of. And you know, that goes across the board. Everything from verbal abuse to. You know, prolonged captivity of cats or dogs. Um, like you mentioned, you know, the extreme confinement of small animals like fish or mice or reptiles. Mm-hmm. Abusive training or aversive training is very prevalent among dog owners. A lot of people might keep their animals outdoors in extreme temperatures. There’s also the issues of lack of exercise and socialization, lack of veterinary care and grooming, boredom. Um, abandonment. You know, one study found that in the US up to 20% of cats and dogs adopted from shelters could be returned.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Wow.

Kenny Terrell Um, the list goes on and on and on of all of these issues that, you know, aren’t as blatant as some of the things we’ve talked about. But when you add them all up and you consider that there are in the US 250 million animals kept as pets around 28 million in Canada, it could be, you know, a lot of, of what I call lower grade cruelty and neglect, that could be inflicting a lot of suffering on animals.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Let’s talk about how we, uh, tend to view that, and I mean, we can talk about cats in particular, but I think this applies to other pets as well, which is we tend to assume that they have an ideal life, right? You know, we joke like, get to sleep as long as you want. You can sleep 15 hours a day, then you wake up and you get fed as much as you want and you just get to do no work and hang out and it’s a lovely life. You’re well cared for. Do these animals see it that way? What do we know?

Kenny Terrell Yeah, so it, it’s complicated because, you know, one thing that a mythologist named Mark Beckoff told me is that, you know, while dogs, they tend to have a lot of energy, they also really like to sleep, they like to be well rested so that they can be on guard and be alert.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell But at the same time, like you mentioned, uh, you know, we have this, you know, running joke that pets are really pampered. They get to lay around and be fed treats and maybe play occasionally. But Jessica Pierce said, You know, for a lot of cats and dogs just laying around all day, being fed treats is probably a profoundly boring and frustrating life for an animal. Right? And hearing that really made me wonder, like, wow, you know, am I. Pouring my dog all day by not being able to give her attention, not being able to play with her or take her on walks or have her play with other dogs. And so I do think that there very well could be, you know, uh, an epidemic of pet boredom.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell Um, it might seem a little silly on the surface. But boredom is a really, really frustrating emotion. And I think for humans, we’re lucky enough that we don’t really have to experience it much. You know, we can pick up our phone or get on our laptop or turn on the TV and have, you know, literally an endless stream of entertainment, right? But for cats and dogs and other animals, they are completely dependent on us for their basic needs, which I would consider, you know, exercise and socialization and play, certainly basic needs.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And you mentioned you adopted your dog in the pandemic. Um, I know a lot of people who have done this, obviously the numbers show a ton of people did this, um, how does that exacerbate the problem you just described?

Kenny Terrell Yeah, so, uh, you know, speaking for the United States here, uh, in the pandemic, you know, one in five households adopted a new pet and. There’s a really great aspect to this. You know, a lot of animal shelters were reporting that they were adopting animals out in record numbers, and that’s great news, right? But you know, the lockdown nature of the pandemic only lasted so long. And so once people started getting vaccines, they started going back to work, having more social time, and our pets had a hard time adjusting. You know, there is one Forbes study that found really high rates of. Chewing and, and digging and destruction and barking and howling and, you know, attempts at escaping and urinating and defecating indoors in early 2022, which was this time when society had really adjusted to having been vaccinated and life returning to somewhat normal.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell And so that’s just like one striking example of a kind of real world test as to how cats and dogs other and other animals deal with captivity and isolation in boredom as they were adjusting to their owners changing schedules.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Why does it feel kind of taboo to talk about this as loving pet owners? Ostensibly anyway. I mean, there’s a reason that I joked off the top, like, why do you hate puppies? You know?

Kenny Terrell So yeah, it does feel very taboo. You know, when I went to publish this article, I was afraid that I would be ripped apart by the internet. Um, but to my surprise, the general response kind of fell into two categories, and one was, Hey, I’m, I’m glad you wrote this because I had been having some discomfort with keeping pets for years and I couldn’t quite articulate it. When I brought it up, people thought I was crazy.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Kenny Terrell But this kind of makes some intuitive sense. Then there was this other re reaction that was, Hey, I was totally ready to hate this and hate you, but I actually kind of agree with a lot of what you’re saying here. Yeah. And so I think this is one of those issues that is kind of hidden in plain sight that a lot of people. Have some level of discomfort with leaving their cat or dog or other animal alone all day. They worried they might be bored, they might be frustrated that their cat or dog are, you know, in, in their eyes, quote unquote misbehaving. Um, and that can be frustrating. So I think because there are 28 million pets in Canada, 250 million pets in the us, this is a really intimate issue that most people. Have experiences with, and thus they might have some complicated experiences with, and it feels taboo to talk about because like I mentioned earlier, we, you know, we have this really sunny, wholesome narrative around pet keeping, but when you actually dig under the surface, there’s a lot of conflict. There are a lot of ethical issues that I should be clear. I’m not above, you know, I kind of wrote this article to force myself.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell To really dive deeper. Into pet keeping to give my dog a better life and to try to hold myself accountable. Tell me about the money behind it. You mentioned 28 million pets in Canada. Um, that’s almost one for every person in the country. Same in the United States. Um, how big is this business and how much is invested in making sure we keep acquiring pets and keep buying them stuff? Yeah, it’s, it’s enormous. In the US it’s about 130 billion industry. In Canada, it’s almost a billion, and so a lot is riding on keeping this wholesome narrative going to not only keep. Breeding dogs and cats in the puppy mills that I talked about, but also, you know, selling dog and cat toys and food and supplies and veterinary care and grooming and uh, and boarding. And so there’s a lot riding on keeping this narrative going, but I think it’s important, you know, that we question it and really, you know, second guess and think twice about. The whole endeavor of pet keeping. What should we watch for if we’ve already got a pet? And you know, someone’s listening to this episode and thinking, oh boy. Um, What are the signs of boredom or, you know, depression, I guess, uh, in pets that we can actually see and kind of identify and maybe change? Yeah, so I spoke with a biologist named Charlotte Byrne in the United Kingdom, and she’s at, she’s at a veterinary college, and she said there are two main animal responses to boredom, and the first is drowsiness, which we can see in animals as you know, yawning, staring off into space, even if they’re not tired. The second is restlessness, so that can look like engaging in behaviours to try to stay awake. They might try to escape. They could take risks, they could explore things even if they’re not interested. And so I think throughout the day we should be keeping an eye on our pets and looking for these signs and doing as much as, as we can within reason to try to give them a more enriching and stimulating life.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That’s really good advice. Um, and so far we’ve kind of talked about. Yeah, practical stuff, uh, that we can watch for and that we can do and maybe we should think about, um, as pet owners, but there are some more extreme opinions out there. Tell me about pet abolitionists.

Kenny Terrell Right. So there, there are some parts of the, you know, animal rights movement that say we shouldn’t be keeping pets at all. And you know, one of the loudest voices on this issue is, uh, a Rutgers philosophy and law professor named Gary Franc. And. He says, look, we have this legal system in the United States, and I presume it’s not too different in Canada, where cats and dogs and other animals have little to no legal protections.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell You know, their, their legal protections are kind of more like objects than humans, and so as a result, the welfare standards are always going to be incredibly low. And the accountability for abusing an animal is already, is always gonna be very low as well. And it’s also really hard to keep anyone accountable for how they treat their pets, because pet abuse happens in the privacy of the home. If you take all of these animal cruelty problems together, and we ask, okay, is all of the suffering and cruelty and neglect worth the. Joy and happiness that pets bring us. I don’t think the answer is so clear cut. And so I don’t know if we should abolish pet keeping all together. I think it’s obviously a political and cultural non-starter to suggest as such, but I do think we should radically rethink the role of pets in modern life. I think the idea of abolishing pets is, is really interesting. Uh, it gives us a lot to chew on. It’s certainly not gonna happen anytime soon. Let me ask you about the flip side of that. You know, you mentioned for the joy and comfort that it brings us, and we’ve talked a lot about how, um, pets can be bored and, and maybe neglected, but pets also love us. Like, I don’t think there’s any, any doubt that, you know, when you come home, your dog is happy to see you and my cat likes to be petted and all that kind of stuff. Like the animals are not as much as they may be bored or neglected, uh, at times, they also, you know, clearly get some positive emotions out of their humans. That’s right. Clearly. Cats and dogs and other animals can have really enriching lives and have amazing relationships with their human counterparts. I certainly feel that way about my dog, Evie. And one thing I should say is that, At the end of the day, you know, there’s always a lot of mystery here. As much as we can try to observe cats and dogs and infer how bored or not bored they are, um, we’re never gonna completely know.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell But I think I always come back to this question of are we keeping cats more for us? Whether we wanna keep them as a companion or as like a casual hobby or kind of have them as an accessory, or are we doing it out of altruism because we saw a cat or dog in a shelter who is going to otherwise be euthanized and we wanted to save their life? One thing I kept hearing in my interviews with animal experts is, yeah, we should really think more about the give and take relationship between humans and animals and often. We’re doing a lot more taking than giving, and maybe we need to rebalance a bit here.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Last question. I know we’re not gonna see, uh, pet abolition anytime soon, or should I say pet emancipation?

Kenny Terrell I don’t know what the proper term for it is, but we’re not gonna give up pets. Nobody’s gonna do that. But can you actually see humans taking steps to own pets differently or having fewer pets or, you know, Giving the ones they have now better lives, just given the size of the industry that we discussed here. There’s a ton invested in, in making sure that, uh, to your point, we see that cute kitten in a shelter and we feel like we’re doing something amazing by taking them home. Yeah. So I’ll answer this in two buckets. So the first is, That I think we should just think much longer and harder about whether we have the responsibility and time and energy and patience and money to give a dog or a cat a really good life. You know, it is a 10, 15, 20 year plus commitment and it takes up a lot of time every day, and it costs a lot of money and I know that in the case of my dog, who’s a three year old, uh, who has a lot of energy, it requires a lot of patience.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kenny Terrell And so I think first we should just really think long and hard before we adopt a dog or cat. So that’s number one. The second is if we decide, okay, we can do this. We have flexible schedules. We, we have everything we need to, to give a dog or a cat a better life. It doesn’t stop there. That’s really just the beginning, and so there’s a lot that we can do practically to improve their lives. In the case of cats, if you’re gonna keep them indoors, you can start by giving them walks. You know, this sounds kind of silly, but why not? You know, we give dogs walks. Cats love being outdoors. A lot of cat experts think that cats are not even fully domesticated. They’re semi domesticated, and so, They wanna be outdoors, they wanna be in nature. Mm-hmm. And so seeing if your cat wants to take a walk, not all will, but seeing if your cat wants to take a walk, easing them into it is a good start. I’d recommend listeners check out this guy named Jackson Galaxy. He’s a, a cat expert behaviorist, uh, YouTuber. He has a lot of great videos. And another part is also just what I call codifying one’s home. And so that looks like installing, you know, scratch boxes and high walkways. Hmm. Because this is what cats really like.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Kenny, thank you so much for this. Uh, it’s fascinating to think about and, um, I hope people don’t feel too guilty, but I hope they can take something away from it.

Kenny Terrell Thanks so much for having me, Jordan. Really appreciate it.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Kenny Terrell writing for Vox. That was the big story. For more, you can head to the big story podcast ca and here is where I give the contact information and the pet owners hopefully. Don’t come after me on mass. Guys. If you want to talk about this, you really can. Uh, and I would love to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter at the big story fp n. You can email us with your thoughts at hello at the big story podcast.ca, and you can call and leave a voicemail, (416) 935-5935. Bonus points if you get your dog or cat to leave us a message.

Pav, Jordan Heath-Rawlings family cat’s AI persona Meow meow meow meow meow, huemans have lost the plot. Huemans as a whole species. Meow. There’s still time. Meow.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You can find the big story absolutely everywhere.If you listen to podcasts somewhere and you can’t find this program, let us know. We’ll get it there. And as always, if you like it, tell a friend. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Have a great weekend. We’ll talk Monday.