When I was growing up, I never understood why people would get so upset when their pets died. Of course, I never really cared for the pets I had—starved my hermit crabs to death; fed my guinea pigs but didn’t love them. I wasn’t sad when they died. <\/p>\n
Then, years later, my then-girlfriend (now-wife) and I got a cat. We’ve had him seven years, and I can’t imagine life without him. Now, just thinking that we probably have only another seven to ten years left with him makes me sad. I know I’ll be shaken with grief when he dies. Cats and dogs are special pets. They really form a bond with you and you with them. <\/p>\n
They aren’t people, though. I’ve noticed that. People seem to have very little problem neutering\/spaying, microchipping, or euthanizing pets. (Apparently, though, it’s cruel to declaw a cat?<\/a>) And, apparently, neutering\/spaying, microchipping, and euthanizing humans are unethical acts, at least for most people. <\/p>\n It’s just one of those things, I guess. We’ll eat animals. We’ll befriend animals. We’ll spoil animals, but we won’t quite treat them as human. I think I’ll stop writing now… go have a conversation with my cat instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was growing up, I never understood why people would get so upset when their pets died. Of course, I never really cared for the pets I had—starved my hermit crabs to death; fed my guinea pigs but didn’t love them. I wasn’t sad when they died. Then, years later, my then-girlfriend (now-wife) and… Continue reading Pets aren’t people… are they?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1889,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/1889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}