Pet Play

The Only Ethical Owner-Pet Relationship

Katherine Bishop

We love our pets. We care for them, providing a home, food, water, play, and attention, in exchange for companionship, emotional support, a mood boost, and cuddles. It sounds idyllic, both human and companion animal in a loving, mutually beneficial relationship. There’s one glaring problem: lack of consent.

As we can’t clearly communicate with them, and there is a power disparity between humans and domesticated animals, our pets cannot consent to being pets. They are bred for the purpose of being a pet and they are forced into being a pet with no choice. Keeping a pet can be just as oppressive to animals as murdering them with no remorse and devouring their dead bodies.

But how could we give up pets? What would we do without the dynamic of one being giving up its full autonomy in exchange for another being caring for its every need? Luckily, we don’t have to go without it. The only problem with the owner-pet relationship is that the animal’s can’t provide consent. Who can provide consent? Adult human beings. You don’t need to give up pets. You just need to find a human being who consents to being your pet!

The answer to the ethical crisis of pet ownership is pet play. Now, before you prudes scoff, gag, or recoil at this proposal, you must understand that pet play does not have to be kinky or sexual. As long as both parties consent, it can look however you want it to. The best part of it is, you don’t have to clean up their shit or fight to give them baths (unless that’s something you are both interested in). Imagine: You come home from work after a long, stressful day. Your pet human excitedly greets you at the door, showering you with attention. When you sit down they lay in your lap while you stroke their head or pat their back. They will let you know if anything suspicious is going on inside or outside the house. They will always be there for you whenever you need them. All you have to do is provide them food, water, shelter, and love.

One concern with transitioning from nonhuman to human pets may be the challenge of finding a pet. There is an abundance of cats and dogs to adopt without you having to do the work of searching for an animal that wants to be a pet, getting to know the animal, and figuring out what the animal wants out of you as an owner. Well, the reason it is so easy to find a nonhuman pet is because we force them to breed, enslave them, sell them, and if we get bored or its too much work, we abandon them. Then we kill the 2.7 million each year that no one wants. So if you prefer an animal pet to a human one simply because of convenience, it only means you are too selfish and lazy to stop contributing to slavery and abuse. If you care about animals, switch to human pets.

Disclaimer: Dr. Munn Sanchez is a PhD, not a real doctor