It’s bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?
I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can’t bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn’t really remove the “pet dilemma” to me.
Most people I know adopt from rescue shelters and all the vegans I know do that, often even focusing on pets that are somewhat “disadvantaged” regarding getting adopted, i.e. disabled or chronically ill animals. They go to an animal shelter not primarily with the wish of having a pet but providing a better life for an animal (because let’s face it, even the best-intentioned shelters are understaffed and underfunded).
This is a good, nuanced take that I as a vegan have struggled with believing. We don’t want pets, but animals are very much still suffering in this imperfect world.
To be honest, I’ve never seen anyone take a dog from a shelter. With cats - yes, and I only know a handful of people who own a specific type of cat. But everyone I know and all people I meet have specific dog breeds or known mixes that were planned - both in the making and adoption.
That’s just bizarre, I don’t know anyone that has a purebred, their all mixes. Usually part pittie, because I live in an urban area and that’s mostly what’s at the shelters.
Well, my family’s dog when I was young was a rescue dog, no purebred (should be illegal anyway) or “targeted mix”. Tbh, no one ever knew exactly which breeds she was from, and I will probably never understand why people are so fixated on this shit.
All three of the dogs in my house are rescues that would have been put down if we hadn’t adopted them. I work with The Barking Lot in San Diego, and we routinely drive up to Orange County to rescue dogs that are going to be out down. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with these dogs, they just didn’t get adopted “in time.” There are rescue organizations all over the US, and while you will have to jump through some hoops and pay an adoption fee, that is simply because we absolutely don’t want these dogs ending up in puppy mills or fighting rings.
am not vegan but I’ll point out:
giving a cat a home, and fixing it so it won’t breed further rescue cats, is not a dilemma to me.
Imagine you wanted children and then someone would come along and castrate you because there’s a problem with overpopulation. You take away an individaul’s choice of reproduction for the greater good. And it makes sense, but the lack of consent or even understandment does not sit well with me.
Putting down pets is another thing. You make the decision whether a (sick/suffering) animal is going to die, while we are refusing to allow people to make this decision for themselves in most countries.
I absolutely see your point and I would not say you are wrong about it. But to me these are ethical questions that I just don’t wish to answer because there is not really a right answer.
Imagine you wanted children and then someone would come along and castrate you because there’s a problem with overpopulation. You take away an individaul’s choice of reproduction for the greater good. And it makes sense, but the lack of consent or even understandment does not sit well with me.
You’re anthropomorphizing animals too much. Cats don’t “want” children. Beyond a basic biological need they don’t give a shit about procreation. It’s not even a difficult question, ethically speaking. In almost every environment they exist in cats are considered invasive, reproduce like crazy, and tend to be incredibly destructive to local species. To be clear, I don’t think there is anything wrong with owning a cat, but it’s important to do so responsibly.
On the fixing side of things, this is traditionally decided throughout animal husbandry by whether or not it positively impacts the animal’s ability to do it’s job. A housecat’s job is to provide companionship and occasional mouse removal for which fixing positively impacts companionship while have no impact on the secondary role. A dairy goat obviously won’t be able to produce milk if fixed so they generally remain able to reproduce, but goats kept for their wool are fixed more based on behavior and population control needs. Horses might be fixed to prevent behaviors that affect their ability to pull/be ridden, etc. etc.
So ultimately part of the ethics debate surrounding fixing your pets ties straight into the ethics of animal husbandry to begin with. I personally struggled with this when I moved from the city into farm country and saw first hand how the care for cats flipped from “every cat is special” to “yeah they’re just like there and kinda cute plus they kill the mice so I feed them sometimes so they stick around.” And I had to grapple with how there is no consistent line for what animal is special and must be saved and what animals are just there and the circle of life is up to them. I don’t have any easy answers to give on this subject, so I generally go with whatever is socially acceptable balanced out with concern for the animal’s happiness and well-being within the context of them still filling the job(s) they are being kept to fill
In my mind its all about acting in the animals best interest. Childbirth isn’t easy on a cats body and neither is the stress they will obtain if they desire reproduction and are not able to do so. Spay and neuter are therefore in the cats (or dogs) best interest
When “keeping bees” you are ever only hosting them. If the conditions are not to the hive’s liking, they will find somewhere else to live. This is a significant problem in North America where honeybees are not native, as they will displace native species. But if you have a productive hive, they are happy and well treated.
My understanding is that the queen bee is generally restricted from leaving the hive by a physical gate. The workers won’t leave without her.
I knew a hardcore vegan girl like a decade ago when it was rather rare to see someone to that extreme, or at least to me. She said she feeds her cat only vegan food, and i was pretty sure that that’s not a thing, but i didn’t really know. Her roommate then told me that she goes through quite a lot of cats, because they either die or run away.
Yeah, adopt don’t shop. But I’ve met many vegans who don’t want pets at all. Including myself, I find the concept of owning a pet a little strange. But that’s something everyone should decide for themself.
But that’s something everyone should decide for themself.
Honestly I’m not so sure about that. I’m actually annoyed by the lack of regulation. Why is pet breeding still a thing? Owning a pet seems like something that should be phased out (while working on getting the numbers of new born pets down).
Don’t get me wrong, I like animals, I’ve grown up with a cat who lived to 21 years and I consider him more of a brother than a pet, and I love cats, but I wouldn’t want to repeat this again. With cats you are damned if you let them outside and damned if you don’t. Dogs should just not exist in public spaces. A lot of people are afraid of dogs and every dog “doesn’t bite” before he bites one for the first time. I also don’t care if they bite or not, I don’t want an animal touching me or my stuff, period. The trees suffer, the playgrounds are surrounded by shit, and people tense up in a subway or restaurant when there’s a dog. Unless you are a farmer with a huge piece of land you just should not have a dog. (Or need an animal for disability reasons of course.)
Sounds more about bad owners (not having their dog on a leash, not respecting others personal space, or not pickingnup the dog shit) than about dogs.
I agree that it seems the obvious choice for a vegan is to not own a pet cat.
No, they’re hypocrites. These are practices that vegans should not be ok with, and said actions certain don’t constitute a harmonious world view and philosophy. They should be ashamed of themselves. The real actions and ideas they should be putting forward is to not have pets, and to try to reduce invasive species impacts on local ecosystems (in which case cats are neutered to stop reproduction).
