an old friend from my wolverine days, allow me to introduce you to miss dana may.
I didn't grow up with pets. Well, I did have parakeets for a number of years, but that was an experience far different from the dog/cat tradition that it seems most Americans have at one point in their lives. While I would treat you all to the dramas of my childhood gang of budgies-Elvis, Roxanne, Snoopy, Woodstock, and Jimi-it would ultimately be self-indulgent, and no one seems to like parakeets anyway.
I have been thinking a lot about what having a pet does to/for a person. Having very little experience with both cats and dogs, I have only started interacting with them as an adult. I currently live with my girlfriend, whose house mate has a black mutt that she adopted while living in France a few years ago. Her name is Mistral, and I don't think she likes me much. Living with Mistral, and being partially responsible for her while the said roommate is away on vacation, leads me to constantly contemplate this institution of domesticated animal and its master. How the relationship is different for cats and dogs, who are "cat people" and "dog people," and why people get involved in owning them in the first place, among other related tangents on the subject.
Take the case of Mistral. She spends most of her days in the apartment by herself. She sleeps, she chews on a toy, she barks at the mailman or at any noises she hears. The highlight of her life that is not derived from human interaction is when she masturbates. She licks herself and then rubs her bitch-parts with her rather dexterous paw as she slides around in circles on the carpet. We have been witness to her self-loving, and find it to be her most redeeming quality. Yes, I may get short with her when she barks at black people, or presses her cold wet noise against me while I am trying to eat and watch TV. But her pursuit of pleasure exposes a deeper, complex desire that I can at once relate to and be impressed by her ingenuity to obtain it.
But there are aspects of domesticated animals and pet ownership that concern me, and would keep me from ever being a "pet person," or at least a "dog person."
Every morning she waits anxiously for someone to take her out for a walk so she can take a shit. She depends on someone to fill up her food bowl in the morning. When she does go outside for those brief moments in between long stretches of boredom and sleeping, she is kept on a short leash that keeps her from exploring her over-stimulated senses. The leash tells her to walk where it has been designated as a walking space, on hard pavement that must hurt her paws. Her ancestors may have run through open fields in the French country side, or scavenged for food in the streets of the city, making alliances with some dogs and fighting it to the death with others. Now she lies on her side, trying to go to sleep to kill the hours of her day. What she receives in security she exchanges for her freedom.
We can relate to that, can't we? We pay taxes so that the government will pave our roads, educate our children, and buy lots of weapons to protect us from other people. We are layers upon layers of domesticated and coddled, constantly wrestling with our desires to be out of someone else's control and to live by our own determination.
We can relate to that, can't we? We pay taxes so that the government will pave our roads, educate our children, and buy lots of weapons to protect us from other people. We are layers upon layers of domesticated and coddled, constantly wrestling with our desires to be out of someone else's control and to live by our own determination.
What are our leashes? Currently, mine are money, desire to start a career, wanting an apartment in a city where I can walk or ride my bike to a show. I remember a few years ago listening to an NPR report on pets in China. The government started to tax the growing middle class for their trend of buying a new class status marker-pets. The government said that they were charging because pet ownership is ultimately "reactionary," the act of taking away something's freedom for one's own amusement or other selfish reasons. Of course, the CCP looks for any opportunity to make some cash on its people, but it shows not only cultural and economic variance in what it means to be a pet owner, but the significance of choosing to be one. We domesticate some animals to harvest their flesh, milk, or eggs. We initially domesticated dogs to hunt, herd, and protect and cats to eat rats. Now what purpose do domesticated animals serve us now, to rich Chinese people, or to people in a modern, suburban, post-industrial setting?
I know Robin has a dog, and that he has been a rock for her at this point in her life. I am starting to understand and appreciate the role animals can play as companions to their master. It is here that the relationship is not so much about enslavement but about symbiosis. Yes, man does take an animal away from its natural state of the wild (which humans are much too detached from to ever return to, for better or for worse), but he provides the animal not only with food and shelter, but with love, and the animal returns the same. I do question still whether this love an animal exudes (it is never guaranteed, much like human love) is out of a state of mind similar to Stockholm syndrome or out of an actual capacity to love its owner. Perhaps its a mixture of both. Again, we are not so far removed from that state of affairs.
I know Robin has a dog, and that he has been a rock for her at this point in her life. I am starting to understand and appreciate the role animals can play as companions to their master. It is here that the relationship is not so much about enslavement but about symbiosis. Yes, man does take an animal away from its natural state of the wild (which humans are much too detached from to ever return to, for better or for worse), but he provides the animal not only with food and shelter, but with love, and the animal returns the same. I do question still whether this love an animal exudes (it is never guaranteed, much like human love) is out of a state of mind similar to Stockholm syndrome or out of an actual capacity to love its owner. Perhaps its a mixture of both. Again, we are not so far removed from that state of affairs.
Regardless, I do not mean to sound overtly critical of pet owners, because I have known a few such people who really connect with their pet on a level that shows tremendous capacity to relate and communicate with another sentient being, a capability which is void of selfishness and abuse of power. I commend those bonds, but sadly, they are less than the whole of pet-master arrangements.
My mom and dad never wanted to get a cat or dog when I was at the age to demand such a childhood/suburban living milestone. I understood vaguely then and clearly now how big of a responsibility pets are, how they alter your life and space, how they can be just as demanding and expensive as children without the hope that they will ever graduate from college or wipe your ass when you are old and gray. My mom had plenty of reasons, from her allergies to her desire to keep a germ-free house. But the biggest reason for her had more to do with growing up in the wide open spaces of the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She grew up seeing dogs hunt with their owners on a regular basis, living outside and being allowed to run and bark and be dogs. I imagine she was pretty disgusted moving from suburb to suburb with my father and I, seeing expensive designer dogs pent up in houses and cages all day, reduced to furry accessories that had to have their poop picked up off the grass on a daily basis. She talks now about getting a dog when they retire up North, how she will let it run free and be as close to a wolf as it wants to be. But, as both my dad and I know her, she will most likely become overprotective of it, and spoil it with fatty people food and be scared to let it out because of the risk of it being hit by a car or stolen. She knows this about herself, that she would as an owner be unable to let the dog be free, for it would go beyond the definition of their relationship, would be emotionally and logically nonsensical. Because of her inability to reconcile these conflicting feelings of wishing boundless freedom for animals and the human nature of love tangled with possessiveness, she will go petless. I am too young to say that I will never be with a pet, but it will be a reconceptualization of self and priorities, and just like many young couples before me, it may just break me in for a child. But that is another subject to dissect via blog ramble (on my own turf, again, thank you Robin for your generosity).
I have been focusing on dogs mostly, probably because I am living with one now, but I have considered cats as a potential future pet. I got a bad impression of them at first when an ex worked to domesticate a feral one. But all and all, cats seem like less upkeep, use the bathroom, and need less attention than dogs. That sounds like more my style. But then there is all that hair! And I did inherit my momma's allergies. I will have the rest of my life to think about the meaning of pets, most aptly as I watch Mistral squat to make a turd, and before I have to use all my nerve to pick up her shit, and gather all my energies to make sure my hand is fully covered in plastic...
My mom and dad never wanted to get a cat or dog when I was at the age to demand such a childhood/suburban living milestone. I understood vaguely then and clearly now how big of a responsibility pets are, how they alter your life and space, how they can be just as demanding and expensive as children without the hope that they will ever graduate from college or wipe your ass when you are old and gray. My mom had plenty of reasons, from her allergies to her desire to keep a germ-free house. But the biggest reason for her had more to do with growing up in the wide open spaces of the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She grew up seeing dogs hunt with their owners on a regular basis, living outside and being allowed to run and bark and be dogs. I imagine she was pretty disgusted moving from suburb to suburb with my father and I, seeing expensive designer dogs pent up in houses and cages all day, reduced to furry accessories that had to have their poop picked up off the grass on a daily basis. She talks now about getting a dog when they retire up North, how she will let it run free and be as close to a wolf as it wants to be. But, as both my dad and I know her, she will most likely become overprotective of it, and spoil it with fatty people food and be scared to let it out because of the risk of it being hit by a car or stolen. She knows this about herself, that she would as an owner be unable to let the dog be free, for it would go beyond the definition of their relationship, would be emotionally and logically nonsensical. Because of her inability to reconcile these conflicting feelings of wishing boundless freedom for animals and the human nature of love tangled with possessiveness, she will go petless. I am too young to say that I will never be with a pet, but it will be a reconceptualization of self and priorities, and just like many young couples before me, it may just break me in for a child. But that is another subject to dissect via blog ramble (on my own turf, again, thank you Robin for your generosity).
I have been focusing on dogs mostly, probably because I am living with one now, but I have considered cats as a potential future pet. I got a bad impression of them at first when an ex worked to domesticate a feral one. But all and all, cats seem like less upkeep, use the bathroom, and need less attention than dogs. That sounds like more my style. But then there is all that hair! And I did inherit my momma's allergies. I will have the rest of my life to think about the meaning of pets, most aptly as I watch Mistral squat to make a turd, and before I have to use all my nerve to pick up her shit, and gather all my energies to make sure my hand is fully covered in plastic...
dana: i am not a dog person, i am a sampson specific person. you will have to meet him - he will change your view on pets and domestication forever! cross my heart.
and thank you for your post, i find it funny, intellectually stimulating, and a further insight into your personality! <3
