Are our cats deprived?
05/03/12 05:29
We share our home with two cats. They are frequently the subjects of my photography. In the early days of this blog, the cats were mentioned so often that I decided that I had already written everything I know about cats and that further blogs focusing on the pets would become boring for readers. The cats didn’t stop doing things that I think are cute.
The cats were a natural outgrowth of being parents. Our daughter was the one who wanted to have cats and I didn’t resist. We had had pets when we were children and pets offer a lot of education for growing children. The jobs of pet care are good lessons for children. They need to be fed even when the child is tired or not feeling well. They need attention even when the child is distracted. And pets offer unconditional love. When things at school aren’t going well, the pet still comes to cuddle. When friends are being fickle, pets are not.
Our first experience with a cat didn’t go as expected. The kitten was adopted from a farm and on its first visit to the vet we learned that it had feline leukemia. We opted to provide comfort care and to keep the cat in our home. It was a lesson in mortality for our children. The cat was able to drink and we were able to control pain right up to the end, so we watched as the small creature lost strength and finally died in its sleep. A simple backyard burial and many conversations about grief and loss followed. We waited before adopting another cat.
Over the years, we lost two cats to encounters with cars on the busy streets in our neighborhood. Trips to the shelter resulted in new cats in our home. When our daughter moved out on her own, she mostly lived in apartments that did not allow pets. For one short period of time she had one of the cats in her apartment and we had the other at home, but another move ended up with the cat back at our house. Now she and her husband are in their own home with their own puppy and we are living our lives with the cats here.
I didn’t exactly plan for life to be this way, but I am not complaining. We’ve lived with the cats long enough that we’ve become quite attached to them. The routines of their care don’t take too much of our time and the cats enjoy taking lots of naps and so aren’t bothered by the fact that we work outside of the home every day. Cats don’t have to be walked every day, so the work load is a bit lighter than a dog.
And they are photogenic.
According to the American Pet Association, the spending on pets in the United States topped $50 billion in 2011. That is a lot of money. Food and veterinary costs accounted for about 65% of the figure, but the category of “pet services” grew faster than any other, totaling $3.79 billion. That category includes grooming, boarding, pet hotels, and pet-sitting.
We contributed to that figure in 2011. It was a sabbatical year for us. We were gone for three months during which our cats lived in our home. I think we paid neighbor kids a total of about $60 to come and check our cats’ food, water and litter boxes. That was an unusually expensive year for us in the pet care department. Most years $20 will cover the costs.
Our cats have never gone to a pet hotel. Given their behavior at the veterinary clinic, I don’t think they would be seen as star guests. They don’t get paid grooming. We buy a new brush from time to time, but that is it. They also haven’t ever had the benefit of pet dental services. Our vet does recommend tooth cleaning for the cats, but so far we have resisted. They get an annual visit to the vet. They get high-quality food – the brand recommended by the vet. They get fresh cat litter – though it is beyond me why Bentonite, mined and dried in Wyoming, has to be put on a train and shipped to St. Louis where it is bagged then put on a truck and shipped to Rapid City where I buy it. Our cat litter gets to travel a lot more than our cats do.
Our cats appear to be healthy. Peekaboo, the elder, is two or three years older than the average life for a domestic shorthair. She is thin, but otherwise healthy. She doesn’t appear to have any pain in her joints and her teeth appear to be just fine. Coconut, the younger of the cats, is no spring chicken, either. She must be ten or eleven years old. Other than the fact that her claws are too long and I can’t bring myself to trim them, so she has to go to the vet for that service, she doesn’t get any fancy grooming, either.
Most cats are naturally good groomers and since both of ours are shorthairs they really don’t require more than brushing.
Here’s another thing our cats don’t have: insurance. Yes, they are among the millions of uninsured pets. That doesn’t stop pet insurance from being a growing industry. Pet insurance premiums were estimated to be $450 million in 2011, and the industry is growing.
Our cats also don’t have any bionic toys. Heck, they don’t even have a mechanical mouse. I have, however, neglected to repair the torn seal on the bottom of one of our garage doors. As a result a mouse can slip under the door. Since the cats’ bed is in the garage and they spend quite a bit of time out there, they find the occasional mouse to be a great entertainment. Both cats believe that they would be fearless hunters if we allowed them to go outside. The problem is not their fear, but my fear of cars on the street. At any rate, they are efficient in dispatching the occasional mouse that is attracted by the presence of cat food in our garage. And they seem to be entertained by the exercise. I haven’t yet noticed a dramatic change in the number of mice in the grassland and forest near our home.
I don’t know if our cats feel any sense of disenfranchisement due to the fact that our spending on them is much lower than average. They both seem to have quite a few psychological quirks. Peekaboo has a persistent paranoia, especially when we have guests in our home. She can hide for hours at a time. Coconut is definitely hyperactive. She may even have attention deficit disorder. We’ll never have firm diagnoses. Both cats belong to an owner who is too cheap for pet psychiatrists.
Never fear, the economy is strong. Pet psychology is another growing field in the U.S. Spending on psychiatric medications such as Prozac and Zoloft for pets was up 35 percent in 2011. It may be the fastest growing segment of the $7 billion pet pharmaceutical industry.
I don’t think the cats know that they are deprived.
Our first experience with a cat didn’t go as expected. The kitten was adopted from a farm and on its first visit to the vet we learned that it had feline leukemia. We opted to provide comfort care and to keep the cat in our home. It was a lesson in mortality for our children. The cat was able to drink and we were able to control pain right up to the end, so we watched as the small creature lost strength and finally died in its sleep. A simple backyard burial and many conversations about grief and loss followed. We waited before adopting another cat.
Over the years, we lost two cats to encounters with cars on the busy streets in our neighborhood. Trips to the shelter resulted in new cats in our home. When our daughter moved out on her own, she mostly lived in apartments that did not allow pets. For one short period of time she had one of the cats in her apartment and we had the other at home, but another move ended up with the cat back at our house. Now she and her husband are in their own home with their own puppy and we are living our lives with the cats here.
I didn’t exactly plan for life to be this way, but I am not complaining. We’ve lived with the cats long enough that we’ve become quite attached to them. The routines of their care don’t take too much of our time and the cats enjoy taking lots of naps and so aren’t bothered by the fact that we work outside of the home every day. Cats don’t have to be walked every day, so the work load is a bit lighter than a dog.
And they are photogenic.
According to the American Pet Association, the spending on pets in the United States topped $50 billion in 2011. That is a lot of money. Food and veterinary costs accounted for about 65% of the figure, but the category of “pet services” grew faster than any other, totaling $3.79 billion. That category includes grooming, boarding, pet hotels, and pet-sitting.
We contributed to that figure in 2011. It was a sabbatical year for us. We were gone for three months during which our cats lived in our home. I think we paid neighbor kids a total of about $60 to come and check our cats’ food, water and litter boxes. That was an unusually expensive year for us in the pet care department. Most years $20 will cover the costs.
Our cats have never gone to a pet hotel. Given their behavior at the veterinary clinic, I don’t think they would be seen as star guests. They don’t get paid grooming. We buy a new brush from time to time, but that is it. They also haven’t ever had the benefit of pet dental services. Our vet does recommend tooth cleaning for the cats, but so far we have resisted. They get an annual visit to the vet. They get high-quality food – the brand recommended by the vet. They get fresh cat litter – though it is beyond me why Bentonite, mined and dried in Wyoming, has to be put on a train and shipped to St. Louis where it is bagged then put on a truck and shipped to Rapid City where I buy it. Our cat litter gets to travel a lot more than our cats do.
Most cats are naturally good groomers and since both of ours are shorthairs they really don’t require more than brushing.
Here’s another thing our cats don’t have: insurance. Yes, they are among the millions of uninsured pets. That doesn’t stop pet insurance from being a growing industry. Pet insurance premiums were estimated to be $450 million in 2011, and the industry is growing.
Our cats also don’t have any bionic toys. Heck, they don’t even have a mechanical mouse. I have, however, neglected to repair the torn seal on the bottom of one of our garage doors. As a result a mouse can slip under the door. Since the cats’ bed is in the garage and they spend quite a bit of time out there, they find the occasional mouse to be a great entertainment. Both cats believe that they would be fearless hunters if we allowed them to go outside. The problem is not their fear, but my fear of cars on the street. At any rate, they are efficient in dispatching the occasional mouse that is attracted by the presence of cat food in our garage. And they seem to be entertained by the exercise. I haven’t yet noticed a dramatic change in the number of mice in the grassland and forest near our home.
I don’t know if our cats feel any sense of disenfranchisement due to the fact that our spending on them is much lower than average. They both seem to have quite a few psychological quirks. Peekaboo has a persistent paranoia, especially when we have guests in our home. She can hide for hours at a time. Coconut is definitely hyperactive. She may even have attention deficit disorder. We’ll never have firm diagnoses. Both cats belong to an owner who is too cheap for pet psychiatrists.
Never fear, the economy is strong. Pet psychology is another growing field in the U.S. Spending on psychiatric medications such as Prozac and Zoloft for pets was up 35 percent in 2011. It may be the fastest growing segment of the $7 billion pet pharmaceutical industry.
I don’t think the cats know that they are deprived.