When a prospective nanny told us she has three furry children, N and I were stumped. I sincerely thought her children had a rare disability and felt compassion.
When I finally figured out (by means of a couple of Google searches) that furry children were pets, I realized I will not be able to work with this person. N still doesn’t believe furry children mean animals and thinks I’m calumnying the poor woman.
I…don’t want to know what Rule 34 things you came up with during that search.
It just means she’s very attached to her pets. If those pets happen to be dogs, then she won’t be away from them for long because dogs need attention.
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I haven’t even thought about it this way. But good point.
I was mostly creeped out by the way she refers to them. These are usually very cooky people.
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This is some creepy shit. Also creepy when people call themselves ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ of the pet.
I love animals and have cats as pets, but kill me if I ever start to exhibit this behavior.
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Yes. Brrr. I mean, I passionately love my phone. But I don’t call myself its mother. That would be too crazy.
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I have heard people refer to their pets as their fur babies, but furry children is a new expression for me. For what it’s worth, I’m a native English speaker and immediately assumed the two expressions were synonymous.
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Fur babies is even worse. It’s like you keep them to collect fur from them.
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Well, if you keep a mammalian pet indoors, you’re going to collect a LOT of fur over the years, whether you want to or not. I’ve had an indoor cat for 16 years, and if I’d saved all the hair it’s shed, I’d have enough to stuff a full-sized bed pillow by now.
Don’t be so contemptuous of people who feel attached to their pets. It’s true that pets don’t have the same potential as children, but they aren’t nearly as much trouble, either.
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I hate the use of “fur babies”. We have pets, they are very important members of our household, we love them, spend money on them, and do lots of things for them, but they are not babies or children and the comparisons people make between pets and human children are just really strange.
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“the comparisons people make between pets and human children are just really strange”
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I agree! Bringing an animal into another person’s house is beyond the pale — unless it’s something like a snake that you’re going to be holding in your hand the whole visit, so it won’t get on the furniture or floor.
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Ummmm, I would never allow a snake into my home for a visit. Well-behaved dogs are very welcome. I think this is really one of those things where pet owners need to ask and accept that different people have different comfort levels with animals.
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Bringing a pet to someone else’s house without being asked to (or without having been given permission) ahead of time is just rude.
I tend to think the same about family members too (though I’m less likely to ask “Can’t they wait in the car?”)
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I adopted a half-grown kitten, sort of like a pre-teen in terms of development, who managed to communicate to me that he was a baby and needed me to be his parent. I gave in, in this case. However what I actually find fun about pets is that they are not human and you are not their parent. You are living with them but they are somebody else.
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The company of animals can be a wonderful thing and I feel a kind of… compassion for those who’ve been deprived of it.
But… a dog or cat is not a child and the more a person treats/thinks of them as children (even joking) the worse it is for the animal itself.
Dogs are the most protean non-human animals on the planet and can be trained/bred to fill all kinds of roles (the different shapes and sizes and natures and abilities of different breed are all human-made).
I suppose it would be possible to breed a variety of dog that would thrive when being treated like a human child but it’s not something that’s going to be instilled in random dogs by needy/frustrated/misguided people.
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While I definitely agree that a pet is not a human child, I am one of those people who thinks of myself as a “parent” (or more accurately, as a “guardian”) to my cat(s)*. When I take in a pet, I become responsible for their well-being for the duration of their life. This doesn’t mean it is my job to raise them, as you would a child, but it is my responsibility to make sure that they are fed, loved, and get the care (medical and otherwise) that they need and deserve as another living creature. That is a considerable responsibility, regardless of whether the living creature is a human or an animal. I also know full well that I cannot care for and raise a human child, and would never consider my pets to be analogous to human children. But each of my pets is a life whom I am responsible for, and I think that sentiment is quite reasonable.
*its complicated – after my cat passed away last summer, I have been fostering special-needs cats for the shelter, so they’re not really mine – I really am just a temporary guardian, but they do depend on me to take care of them, and I take that responsibility seriously.
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A guardian is a perfectly reasonable term. I wish people used it more often for this purpose. But a parent is somebody who either gave birth or participated in the conception, and that’s all.
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You can play with words all you want, but from a legal standpoint, pets and other domesticated animals/livestock are PROPERTY. They can be bought and sold, and their current human possessor is their OWNER.
There are legal restrictions on how you can treat them, of course — I’m allowed to saw the legs off my table, but not my cat — but according to the law, animals are basically property.
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There’s always something even worse than the worst things. 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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