Are pets worth the hassle?
Expense: food and vets.
Time: walks.
Noise: barking, meowing.
Lost sleep.
Mess: poop, pee, drool and hair.
Some need constant attention.
no
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MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Are pets worth the hassle?
Absolutely! Cheaper than having kids and they love you no matter what (even cats 😸).
shareAnd just as heart breaking when they pass. 😥
shareYep 😔.
shareJust as heartbreaking as a kid dying? That's what it looks like you're saying, but not really, right? Right?
shareYeah, that's insanity!
shareAbsolutely just as heartbreaking as when a child of your own dies... but different pet owners different perspectives. I still recall a woman on the plane that gave the stewardess a cute line, saying that there are plenty of babies screaming and crying on the plane so if people are complaining about one cat meowing they should put the babies in the hold too. The stewardess claimed the babies were humans and the cat was an animal, but the woman replied "she is more human than you."
Pet parents pour just as much love and energy into their pets as they would their own children.
Having kids is one of the greatest blessings one can receive!
shareAbsolutely - yes! Unconditional love and you can spoil them rotten and not worry about the consequences.
shareI don't know about unconditional love. I once lived with a housemate who left for 2 weeks for a scientology boat cruise, so I looked after his dog and he started guarding me and being worried about me before he went to bed.
When his owner got back 2 weeks later he said that the dog looked at him like 'oh you, I'd forgotten about you'.
Pets are animals. They function by instinct only; they are not capable of complex emotions or reasoning. A dog clings to its owner because the human is its source of food, water and shelter. This is the survival instinct, not "love."
It can be dangerous to anthropomorphize a pet. Some people have learned this the hard way when the family pit bull mauls a child.
Forget what you see in cartoons, sitcoms or Disney movies. Those are fantasies, people.
So your contention is that cats and dogs have no personalities?
shareHumans are animals there is absolutely nothing special about humans to separate us from other animals. We are all products of evolution, no magic sky fairy created us separate from other animals, and other animals have emotions too.
Now if you want to argue that social animals, like humans, display emotions purely on instinct for survival purposes, I will agree with you there. The feeling of love exists purely to protect ones' offspring (otherwise we'd kill them all due to how annoying they are) and to find and seek out mates to procreate with. Survival dictates that the male and the female should tolerate each other's existence after copulation (the fun part) so that the male might protect the female and her offspring. Children grow an attachment to their caretakers and have evolved to go through a rebellious phase so they separate from the caretakers and seek out their own mates to further spread the human population.
Bulldogs aren't innately violent, they're extremely social which means it's easier to train a bulldog to be violent through extreme beatings and neglect. Similarly, you can train a child to be extremely violent by the same antics.
Humans are animals there is absolutely nothing special about humans to separate us from other animals.
Based on observations of how some people conduct themselves in public, I can see your point. 🙂
But seriously, there must be something that separates humans from animals. How many other "animals":
• are capable of logic, reason and abstract thinking? Things like science and mathematics; awareness of concepts such as time or distance.
• have developed both spoken and written languages?
• have advanced through the creation of technology?
...other animals have emotions too.
I suppose aggression or fear could be considered "emotions"; it's the old fight-or-flight survival instinct. Animals do possess some form of rudimentary behavioral type; for example, some dogs are docile, some are aggressive. Whether or not this constitutes a "personality" is open for debate. It's not the same as the complex personality of a human.
• Most animals are capable of logic, reason, and abstract thinking. Slime mold is capable of remembering where traps are in a maze and actually solving the maze.
• Written language, of course not, but to argue that no spoken language exists because you can't understand it is puerile.
• Tool use is common in the animal kingdom, some animals rely on tools for their very survival.
It seems more so that you're reaching for straws if you're insisting that the personalities of social animals are limited to "fight or flight" despite the science showing that isn't true. Social animals have hierarchies, they have laws, they even declare war on other tribes.
Humans are just bags of organic chemicals, there is nothing truly special about us. What you call a complex personality is simply a result of upbringing and evolution. Chemicals don't have a personality, and that is all we are, all any and all life is, but every decision made is one on "instinct" meaning that chemicals reacted in a particular manner and so you act. Chemicals cannot decide to move differently, humans operate purely on instinct since we are just chemical reactions.
No. I'm not a pet person and would never own one for all of the reasons you listed, especially the fifth one ("Mess: poop, pee, drool and hair.")
shareYeah I lived with a dog and it was a pain. Even for a dog with short hair it left a lot of hair around the house. I would vacuum every day and if I didn't clean out my vacuum right away it would smell like dog.
It was really clingy and would need to be in my room when his owner was gone. He would drool wherever his mouth rested.
I didn't really miss him when I left.
Oh, yes. The stench. You should add that to the list.
shareGenerally, yes. Unless, you have a particular pain in the ass of an animal.
shareI grew up with pets and will always have them as far as I can tell.
shareDepends upon the person and the animal. I love dogs, but adopted cats because I realized they are more my speed at my age. I can't see myself walking a dog during our winters of snow, ice, and sometimes extremely cold weather. And yes, it has taken some getting used to the house not being as clean and tidy as I'm used to, but hey, they can be a hoot!
shareI lived with a cat that until I booted her outside, I really didn't like. She would stink out the house taking a dump in her litter tray.
So I got rid of it and made her sleep outside and use the garden. She got used to it and we got along fine.
Sometimes she'd bug me by tearing things to get attention for food. Besides that, she worked her way into my heart :)
Mine are strictly indoor cats. Safer for them and the local bird population. Litter box is in the cellar so odors aren't a problem.
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