Some vegans say it's wrong to keep pets

[learieonthewildmoor]

I have been thinking about the ethics of keeping pets. (I saw on the PETA website we shouldn't use animals for entertainment. No more cute cat videos on YouTube then?) People love their pets. How can it be wrong?

Sometimes when my cat is sleeping, I think "Now is the time for me to gallop across the bed, making a graceful leap over him", like he does at 4 o'clock in the morning. However, I never do.
He comes to the door whenever I come home, and though I pretend to myself he's welcoming me back; I suspect he is really looking to see if he can escape out onto the driveway. When he does make a mad dash out onto the driveway, he then lies down purring whereupon I pick him up and carry him back in.
I keep a chair next to my computer because he likes to sit next to me. Pretty much every day he sits on my computer mouse until I get up and let him sit in my chair. Then I pick him up and put him on his chair and he goes to sleep.
When he sees me carrying a coffee cup up the stairs, he runs ahead of me and jumps out at my ankles. Only when I'm carrying a coffee cup.
He has a dozen toys but much prefers to bring in leaves and gum nuts which he then puts in my shoes for safe keeping.
He won't eat raw meat so we buy a super expensive dry cat food for his teeth and gums. He hates tablets so we buy the super expensive worm and flea liquid treatment.
I send photos of him to my husband when he is at work. There one million photos of the cat sleeping on our iCloud.

We got him as a rescue kitten and I can't help feeling he's having a better life with us; rather than as a feral animal full of worms and fleas with no safe territory, or euthanised. We get the pleasure of living with him, he gets a good life - it seems like a perfectly ethical arrangement.
I wonder if vegans are being a bit too self-denying and overly rigorous?

Another day I want to talk about the vegan attitude to cheese.

If you take care of them and did not buy them from a pet shop, what is the problem. And I do not see enjoying them as exploitation anymore than I think taking pleasure from cuddling your babies is. Plus animals are not stones. Dogs and cats can enjoy you as well. It can be a relationship.

You can ethically source pets, and the companionship, for instance, of mankind and dogkind is one of the oldest and loveliest parts of our existence as a species. This sounds more like an animal rights loon thing than a vegan thing, and they are not necessarily the same.

Isn't buying meat in a can, the worst kind of meat for your pet hypocritical, if you boycott animal products.

I boycott Nestle but I wouldn't starve a baby to maintain the boycott.

Responsibility to a vulnerable dependent's basic needs trumps ideology.

I'm not vegan, I'm vegetarian but I have two dogs.

How do vegans feel about feeding their pets? I used to feed my dogs raw meat even though I didn't eat it - I don't feed raw anymore but would if they needed to do so for any reason.

Just thinking about dog food manufacturing - obviously that involves animal products.

I boycott Nestle but I wouldn't starve a baby to maintain the boycott
Yes me too, but there are other options.
I cant understand OTT vegans, those who preach about veganism, their beliefs, when you are trying to eat your steak dinner, then have their a pet, scoff meat, rescue breed or not.
I think it is one of the reasons committed vegans believe you shouldn't have pets.

Not many care for the poor animal in the can, when it comes to feeding their pet.

I'm going to regret asking this, but what have Nestle done? Do I have to give up aeros???

Meat in pet food is the offcuts from human consumption that would otherwise be thrown away.

And the cats do a service to the birds by predating them. The alternative would be higher mortality from starvation as they outbreed the available food supply.

@ReganSomerset en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

@sherlock While I feed my dog a high quality, high meat diet, I avoid those brands which claim to use human quality meat as I don't want to add to the demand for meat more than necessary. For treats and chews, I usually buy things that are essentially dried bits of animal - but bits there aren't much demand for in the human food chain. Dried bulls penis (aka pizzle sticks) for chews and dried liver training treats, for instance. Partly it's because it's less processed and I know what I'm feeding him (unlike those ingredients lists that start with "meat and animal derivatives") and partly because it's using up bits that I suspect would be binned otherwise.

On a similar theme, last Christmas eve I was checking out the supermarket reductions section and found some cooked chicken beast that hadn't sold and was about to be binned by an employee, so I bought it and fed it to the dog to stop it going to waste. Similarly I was clearing out the freezer and found a venison steak left behind by an old lodger; I wasn't going to eat it so I cooked it and fed it to the dog. He's also been known to get the meaty bits from an overcatered family party.

If you put a little thought into it, I think you can use dogs to reduce waste rather than just create demand.

I know a vegan who is vegan unless the food is about to go into the bin (for instance, if you were going to leave a meat sausage in a restaurant, she'd eat it before the waiter binned it). She's very pragmatic and reasons that it's preventing waste not creating demand at that point.

I am vegan and have 2 rescue dogs, I did get them as a vegetarian but still. I can’t see me ever not having rescue animals be they dogs or cats. I am more uncomfortable about caged animals than I used to be.

Lots of vegans have rescue pets. Many have little time for PETA too. We are not all the same. Veganism is about not exploiting animals for personal gain. Many are against breeding, over breeding, pet shops, people treating animals as commodities and selling or abandoning them when their get board etc etc. Lots of non vegans feel that way about pets too.

She's very pragmatic and reasons that it's preventing waste not creating demand at that point
Good for her, I like her way of thinking.

PETA can say what they like but it doesn't mean we have to agree with them.
Rehoming a pet is a good way round it, if it troubles you.

This thread is about veganism and pet ownership, and the cognitive dissonance involved in an ethical vegan eschewing dairy products because the dairy indistry supports the meat industry, but keeping dogs and cats, is collosal.

You're kidding yourself if you think the meat fed to dogs and cats has no environmental impact or doesn't support the meat industry: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540283/

Dogs and cats just in the USA produce 64 million tonnes of methane, and 30% of the faeces the human population produce, their food is responsible for 25% of the environmental impact of meat production.

The claim that pets are just using up waste products would allow vegans a get out clause to wear leather too surely, as so many cows are killed for meat you might well wear their skins rather than throw them away... The same for eating unpopular cuts if meat...

Dogs and cats are bad for the environment and keeping them massively supports the meat production industry. That's fine, but own it, don't pretend that your dog or cat is environmentally friendly and just helping clear up leftovers which would otherwise be binned - it's not true on a population level because there are just so very, very many pet dogs and cats.

anothernotherone so what do you suggest happens to the dogs and cats in need of rehoming?

I'm not a vegan and I don't kid myself that my cat isn't contributing to the meat industry, I know he is as he's a carnivore. He has human grade meat and I'll continue to feed him what he likes. He's doing far less harm to the planet than families with a lot of children!

the cognitive dissonance involved in an ethical vegan eschewing dairy products because the dairy industry supports the meat industry

That is not the main reason vegans eschew dairy products. The dairy industry is by and large completely separate from the meat industry.

I don't think my dog is adding nothing to demand for meat - just that there is some give and take in terms of demand created vs waste prevented.

I don't eat meat, don't routinely drive a car, don't have kids, recycle diligently, I buy many of my clothes second hand, don't replace items unless they've broken beyond reasonable repair, don't have a drying machine, and absolutely nothing goes in my bin that could be reused or recycled - for instance, I often give away even relatively insignificant items away via Olio (eg some used polypockets; shower curtain rings that came with a replacement shower curtain I had to buy when the old one fell apart).

Even if my rescue dog isn't exactly carbon neutral, I reckon that overall my impact on the environment is lower than your average Brit.

To be honest I worry more about the pouches his food comes in than the effect his meat has on the planet! The sooner they can be recycled the better.

Re leaving your dogs for eight hours a day :
Well, yes, because I have to work. Or are you telling me that I should give up my job, potentially become homeless, just so I can be by their side 24-7?

Umm, no, we're saying maybe don't have dogs if your life requires you to leave them alone so much?

PinkSparklyPussyCat I don't suggest anything. I just think that people should own their choices and not pretend that the way they choose to live is better unless they are bloody sure they aren't kidding themselves. Those claiming that keeping a menagerie of large methane producing and / or meat eating pets have no claims on the moral high ground IMO. If they're not claiming that, then they're no worse than the rest of us.

I don't suppse I'm the only person who knows a couple of evangelical vegans with a jaw dropping talent for compartmentalising and self delusion to go with their overflowing wardrobe of barely worn clothes and frequent long haul holidays, or high MPG vehicles and menagerie of large animals...

*low mpg

I don't suppse I'm the only person who knows a couple of evangelical vegans with a jaw dropping talent for compartmentalising and self delusion to go with their overflowing wardrobe of barely worn clothes and frequent long haul holidays, or high MPG vehicles and menagerie of large animals

Your straw man has a very pretty hat.

That's fine, but own it, don't pretend that your dog or cat is environmentally friendly and just helping clear up leftovers which would otherwise be binned
This.

Not all vegans have annoying opinions like this. I'm vegan and have 10 pets. Including a dog, i know some other vegans wouldn't agree with me maybe.. but we're not all the same. It a about doing the best you can and I love dogs!

I have had rescued animals (who have all been fed plant foods). I would not breed/buy them and hope other people stop doing so, and then rescuing will no longer be necessary.

I think the reason PETA put down so many animals is that it's the least harm option, on a large scale. Most people who adopt a cat or dog will feed it meat. It makes more sense to kill one cat than thousands of fish or chicken to feed the cat over its lifetime. So it's not hypocritical.

PETA are self publicists of the highest order. I doubt they care about animals as much as they do about self promotion.

I used to be friends with a member of PETA and the ALF. Her stance was that no animals should be used for human purposes, so no guide dogs, working dogs, pets or anything, as the animal was being exploited for human purposes. If the result of that was no animals being bred, so be it. This was about 15 years ago. She was also an anti natalist, so stopped speaking to me when I got pregnant, so i dont know if her view mellowed as she got older!

noodle she sounds like a loon! I'm sure you were glad to see the back of her 😂