The image above is the Cat's Paw Nebula, in the constellation Scorpius. It gets its name to the similarity to the paw of out great feline friends. It's an interesting phenomenon, to own something living. We used to do it for the utilitarian fact that we needed to hunt to survive, and so did these pets, so there was an aligning of interests for animals and humans to work together towards the goal of survival. And some of that still exists to this day in derivative forms, with herding dogs and the like. But for the most part we don't need these animals under our care for pure survival. But yet we still have them, locked away in our homes. As many people do, I find animals cute and have that sense of protecting them from the cruelty that is surviving in the wild, but it still irks me slightly. Like they don't really know that they are pets. They are just surviving at our pleasure. We haven't needed them for survival for quite a long time. And these animals do not know how to survive in the wild as much anymore. Once a dog or cat becomes "house trained" they have abandoned their instincts for the sake of reliance on their owner. Also that idea, "owning" them. It seems weird. They are another living thing. We don't really "own" our children, and the general idea of owning another human has been outlawed in every country in the world. But we don't make an exception for other livings things. Obviously there are not fully rational things in play at this, just tradition. It's traditional for a human to own and care for a pet. It really is almost altruistic to an extent. But it's still to our pleasure first and foremost. What really makes that obvious is the case of an animal that is poorly trained. Say, for example, an aggressive dog. Whether they were not trained or they choose to ignore it, they have become territorial and seek to move people away from it. Whether it's growling, biting, etc. They are deemed "bad" for this survival instinct and then punished in a multitude of ways, all the way up to extermination. Sometimes it is the right thing for that to happen in polite society, but there is still a level of cruelty to it. Removing the breath of life from something because it is deemed "too bad". Our own sentience has determined what is fit for life or not. We are basically playing God with other animals, and sometimes not even for a utilitarian benefit. Pets are expensive and time consuming. And this isn't coming off as someone who hates them, but it's still a strange predicament. The determining what lives part is what irks me the most. We have a whole industry around these animals, including their breeding for "optimal" breeds, which at this point is just for the sake of aesthetics. As well, their living. Billions of dollars dedicated to feeding an animal some food that that is not in the nature to eat. Their generational instinct is to hunt to kill, the ruling nature of predators. But now in a factory some culmination of slop is developed to make sure they have the nutrients they need to survive. And then, there is their death. Likely the person reading this has lost a pet in their life, it feels cruel. It's almost like losing a human, but always at almost. We grieve them, but lesser. It may be due to their life spans, or maybe they can't talk, but it's always lesser than if a human died. And I am not arguing the other case here, I am just looking at it through a material lense. We truly our playing a game with these creatures for our pleasure at this point. I am not fully against it but there is something strange about the tradition from a rational point. Taming a beast so we can dress them up and keep them to look pretty. Also as well, culturally pets are so important. It's to the point where with younger people, people are abandoning the idea of having children in exchange for pets. There is something powerful about them, we gravitate towards having them. I think it's at the point where owning a pet is instilled in our global subconciousness. An evolutionary trait developed over thousands of years of selective breeding of both humans and animals, those with pets having more successful hunts, and then therefore living to spread their genes. But its modern conclusion is a predicament. I have a dog named Reggie, and I love him to death, but do I need him? Is he needed for everyday survival? Likely not. But I still have an emotional connection to him. I really think the playing God idea is apart of this, at the crux of what this article is about. We are their owners and without us they are nothing but wild animals. We tame them to live at our pleasure, to do what we will with. Of course, we have laws in polite society to protect them from abuse, but always at a lesser extent than a human. This article may make me come off as a tree hugging Peta liberal, but I just wanted to look at the material nature of pets.
This image was edited by me and the data was taken with consent from Telescope Live