Consider the Pets. Consider the dog, or cat, or goldfish, or lizard, or hamster.....
They may not grow up in the depths of the ocean, only to be snatched out of their homes and held captive, awaiting death at the hands of a kettle— in fact, the pets we have in our homes most likely have never known living in the wild at all (and no, an afternoon in a gated, suburban backyard does not count as the "wild"). Surely, our domesticated bundles of joy would never be found on our dinner plates, only on our windowsills looking longingly out, or in our cages, clawing at the bars. Perhaps our friendly companions have more to do with our food than we originally thought...
Let's take a look at the hamster (they're totally overshadowed by dogs and cats and deserve some of the spotlight too). My family has had 4 before (two at first, but they died within a couple years and were promptly replaced); they were the first and only pets at my house. From the moment my brother brought them through my front door and I looked into their endlessly black, beady eyes, all I could think was "What was he thinking?" My family... we aren't pet people. Between the grooming, and strange smells, and the pure maintenance a pet requires, my sibling's (and my) pleads for a pet were always met with a scoff or an eye roll. Eventually, though, our hamsters grew on us. Even though, all night long, the sounds urgent sounds of spinning hamster wheels would fill the house; even though we had to buy another cage to separate our two hamsters because "the stresses of captivity" caused for them to "[tear] one another up" to the point that one of them (we called her blackjack) became blind in one eye (Wallace 670).
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| living together in close quarters was no party for our hamsters |
I watched the hamsters scale their "three-story" cages to the very top, only to make the drop all the way down to their bedding. Were they trying to find escape, or simply on a suicide mission? I watched them, notorious for their performances on the hamster wheel, run until they couldn't keep up (often, they would literally flip head over heels), only to pick themselves up and start all over again. Then follows the trite hamster-on-its-wheel metaphor, the one that pokes fun of those who keep running, only to stay in the same place. Perhaps, though, the goal has never been to run towards something, but rather, away from something—captivity. Or, even if it is something they are running towards, maybe it's their native homes in Syria, or Siberia, or Greece, or Rome... after all, we all get a little homesick occasionally, and a living room in Troy, MI doesn't exactly mimic the sandy, dry atmosphere they are used to. I'm not trying to be dramatic... but the more I remember them, I can't help but wonder if they endured pure misery, just for my family to get a few moments of entertainment from them.
I can't be the first one to have stumbled across this train of thought, but is often not talked about for one simple reason: thinking about the experience pets must endure is unpleasant and interferes with our happiness (and as the hierarchy of the Animal Kindom dictates, our happiness should be valued above all else). So, we turn a blind eye as we sign up for an invisible fence, or pick up some catnip, or flush yet another goldfish down the toilet.
Worse than all of this, we make a spectacle of all this misery we put our pets through. We may not live in glass homes, but apparently, it's fine for our pets to. Not just glass, though, we will settle for anything, really: plastic, glass, metal bars.... as long as it lets our pets "watch...while [we] point" (670). Even when our actions are made with good intentions, to give them a home and loving family, we're displacing our pets from their own homes. Sure, many pets are born into domestication (especially hamsters), but home is where the heart is... and I doubt that the fluorescent lights and plexiglass cases of PetCo screams "home."
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