Do you think there is something cruel about keeping pets?

I have always found something a bit cruel about keeping pets. They are animals, meant to be free to wander around and enjoy their simple lives but then we keep them captive for our amusement or to satisfy our own needs.

Take farm animals; you are keeping them to kill them and eat them. fine. ( you can bring in vegetarian arguments but thats just the way it is)

Now cats, dogs, rabbits etc. In MOST settings they are kept in a confined space. and they are made to act in ways which are not quite natural for the amusement of their owners.

A bird IN A CAGE???

A fish IN A BOWL instead of the whole ocean? I know they cant remember more than 3 seconds or whatever but that is not the point.

A rabbit in a CAGE?

A dog IN A HOUSE? AND AN ACRE OR SO OF BACK YARD?

Do you think there is something cruel about keeping pets?-Myspace pets www.myspace.com

It's a good question. As owner of cats and a dog, I think most pet owners think they are providing a better environment than if the animal were on its own, and these animals do enjoy human interaction. As for birds, they probably would prefer to be in the "wild;" fish, I'm not too sure they think about it very much! Overall, pets provide and are given love, and you can't have too much of that in the world. (Irresponsible, ignorant pet owners are a while other issue.)

Do you think there is something cruel about keeping pets?

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I agree with some of what you say, as did the poet William Blake. http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/B/BlakeW...

I don't like the idea of birds in cages or fish in bowls. I saw the sad sight a few weeks ago of dead fish in an aquarium where someone had neglected the air conditioning system. I was put off the idea of mammals in cages when I walked past a pet shop on the banks of the Seine in Paris during fierce summer heat and saw a huge variety of animals crammed into cages without shelter or water, including a swan and a number of white rats, some of which were eating a hapless victim alive.

On the other hand, where we live there are many feral cats and dogs and they have a wretched existence. I have memories of a dog slowly dying in the road, having been struck by a car, and of a cat which had been stoned to death by children in a school playground. I think that being someone's pet is probably considerably less stressful for some creatures, anyway, than being allowed to roam in the wild.

Do you think there is something cruel about keeping pets?

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I didn't choose my pets. They chose me.