Why are we bonkers about pets?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/why-we-bonkers-about-pets

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After the shenanigans of the last week, I will try to stay fluffy. Me and my beloved cat are now reunited. It is shocking to find myself describing an animal as "beloved". I had no strong feelings about Penelope until she was gone. She stayed with my eldest daughter until I had moved house, and is now back here doing her thing, all emerald eyes and feline nonchalance. Getting under my feet, going berserk at my printer, trying to get under the duvet.

But I missed her, and realise how completely bonkers we are about "pets". A man in New Zealand suggested that they need to rid the country of cats to protect their native birds. If someone said that in the UK, they would probably be assassinated by a vegan.

There is a thin line between having a pet and torturing an animal, and I speak with some experience. As a child in Suffolk, I roamed like a wild thing, collecting all kinds of beasts. My favourite was an eyed hawk moth caterpillar that I christened Horny. I was eight. Every adult laughed and I never knew why. I cried when I found him dried up. No therapist has ever relieved my distress at the death of Horny. Nor the upset of having been accused of killing the school newt. I had merely suggested its liberation.

Unlike many, though, I have killed a chicken and rabbits, and am fairly sure I could shank a goat as I don't like their eyes. Posh people shooting birds makes me laugh. Pheasants are the most suicidally dumb things and can hardly fly. They mostly just walk into traffic. The skill required to shoot one is less than it is to hoop a duck in a fairground.

Since those days I have been fairly agnostic about animal rights, but then I had children who demanded pets, as they will. We went through a series of hamsters, including one that was diabetic and which I used to have to revive from a coma – a trick that impressed many (well, a few 10-year-olds). I gave one really nasty hamster to a lesbian couple (where I live, everyone is a lesbian) because they implied that my hamster-mothering was to blame. I warned them that Spike was a vicious little bastard that would bite any child. Two weeks later, he bit through an electric cable and blew up the TV, but he was still alive (karma).

But I am delighted to have Penelope back. It amazes me that the world divides into cat and dog people. Cats don't care about anything, have tiny brains and are quite stupid, but you are not allowed to say this because having a cat says: "Hello, I am a strong, independent, spiritual woman who needs nothing." Dogs, which are cleverer, appear totally stupid because they will do anything for love. And meatloaf.

Acquiring Penelope was in itself an education. I wanted to get a cat from a rescue centre and, in doing so, I realised that many people who run these places are, how to put this?… Special. One woman said I would have to pay her to drive from Chelmsford to inspect my garden to see if indeed I had a garden, as I could be lying. Another said that if I did not want an incontinent cat with cat Aids – weirdly I didn't – I was unfit to own any animal. So Penelope came from a squat and has turned out to be the least mentally disturbed pet we have ever had.

The cancerous mouse was a bad episode: I had to pay a vet £14.75 to have a mouse with a massive tumour put down while my child sobbed in the waiting room – only for the vet to come out and say: "To be honest, it was a struggle." I could happily have had <em>him</em> put down.

My latest struggle is with my friend's pug, Ken. It is the love of her life and she dotes on him even though she is sane and rational. Well, as sane and rational as any friend of mine ever is. I have dogsat Ken with a long list of instructions, starting: "DO NOT GIVE KEN CHOCOLATE. HE WILL DIE." Within half an hour of my friend leaving, he had eaten a huge green plastic toy. And he snores. Why you would have a dog that is bred to have respiratory problems is beyond me. But she insists that Ken is beautiful. My eldest daughter's ultra-polite boyfriend said: "But he looks like a squashed worm." He wont be making that mistake again. My friend also insists Ken is an intellectual because an Australian vet, whom she didn't fancy in the least, said he was clever. Unfortunately, like so many of our top intellectuals, Ken is a racist and will bark at Muslims, even on the telly.

To be frank, I think anyone who really cares about animals would not have pets, would not pen them up, would campaign about intensive farming and not say they love animals while eating them.

But, as I said, I wouldn't want to upset anyone.