Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Last night at my brothers 22nd birthday party... Me and my brother had a very interesting disscussion about Domestic Animals. I know we cant do anything about this, and i know it is too late for the animals to go free instead of domestic but heres the interesting thoughts about domestic animals that you might've never thought of before. Doemestic animals have not been prepared to be domestic over the last million years of evolution. Dogs have 4 legs so they can run through the fields and canyons and chase down prey not play frisbee for an hour a week. Parrots have wings so they can fly over jungles and accross the vast wild landscapes, not just sit, wings cut away, in little cages, with nothing to do to maintain their spirits but to sing to themselves and learn meaningless fragments of less musical languages. Cats have claws so they can fight and hunt and sharpen them anywhere they choose, they have testicles and ovaries so they can mark territory and go into heat and make love and raise kittens; cut all these off and keep them locked inside, and they get grouchy, pathetic, fat for lack of anything to do but to eat standard-issue canned food they cant even hunt. Domestic animals are expected to be the vourt jesters and courtesans of the modern householdm to provide entertainment and surrogate comunity, and their lives and even bodies are adjusted accordingly. Their role is not to be animals, in all the wondrous complexity that entails, but simply to be toys.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

It isn't cruelty. We are pretty much saving them. In the industrialized world where humans take reign, animals have no place wondering our streets. They will just get hunted down, killed, ran over, or treated badly. It isn't anything we can help, though it is our faults.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Our cats about 17 years old now
Shes been run over twice

I fear that if she was out in the wild she would be dead :(

We give her food a place to sleep adn some attention when she wants it
I dont think thats cruelty

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there's nothing wrong with domestic animals...

I love "my" cat very much. infact, it's really not my cat. all it does is come here for some shelter, food and attention. it comes and goes when it pleases.

true, there are stupid people that keep their pets inside the house 24/7 and don't let them do anything or don't pay enough attention to them. in wich case, don't take a pet you jackass.

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good points, it is indeed a good deed to have those animals safe with us. However what im saying are the parts of how we feed them with human-made canned foods, we keep them in our society and houses. Animals were not supposed to be evolved into this you know? But other than that, We do help domestic animals alot.

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Do you have any idea what your talking about? A parrot won't fly more then a few miles or it will die unless it stops and rests. They get tire really fast

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I see your point about parrots. They aren't allowed to fly around and such. But who the hell wants a parrot? All they do is sit there are poop.

Cats and dogs have been kept as pets for a long time. Not all cats become fat when they are kept indoors. Consider those who live on farms where their cats and dogs are allowed to roam free and come indoors whenever they want (Indoor/outdoor pets). Even these animals can become fat (overfeeding). The problem with animals becoming fat is not caused by their being made into pets, but by stupid owners that feed them too much.

EDIT: None of the poll questions represent my feeling on the matter, so I didn't vote.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

We have been domesticating cats for centuries now, possibly even for a millinium.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Keeping domesticated animals is only cruel if one does not take proper care of them and allow them nearly every freedom that they would experience if they were not domesticated.

My dog not only has a very nice place to sleep, but she is treated very well by my family and friends and she recieves a daily walk (sometimes more than one) around our neighborhood.

Now keeping a caged bird, which is another example of a pet and one of mine, is a possibly case of cruely, depending on one's individual perspective. Yes, mine is kept in a cage most of the time with an occasional outing, but we are at a bit of a stalemate regarding what else to do with her. She is most used to the environment of our home, and there is usually not enough time to accomodate desires for attention that she might have. For the time being, we simply feed her, clean her cage once a week and give her attention when absolutely necessary.

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Now really. Do you think a Black Labador could live in the wilderness? Hell no.
Or a domestic cat, hell no. Now, a hard core bad ass cat like a bob cat or a lion, thats a different story.

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Nothing wrong with keeping domestic pets, aslong as you give them their freedom and allowed them to go outside whenever they want (or take them outside -or not at all in the case of birts and fishes :p) and just treat it with love.

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Some cases are quite the opposite with bird owners, as the bird is so attached to it's owner that it will never leave his/her shoulder in public.

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Most domesticated animals have been specifically bred for a specific purpose, for example, English Springer Spaniels are gundogs with a soft bite, this soft bite allows them to go and fetch birds which have been shot and suchlike. This soft bite would also make survival in the wild nearly impossible. That is, if they weren't domesticated to the point of relying on humans in the first place.

Budgies are another good example. They're foreign animals, and they would die outside, if not from the harsh winters of Britain then from other birds killing them. Again, this is if they weren't domesticated to the point of relying on humans in the first place.

It's too late to decide whether or not keeping animals is cruel. The alternative is letting most of them die. I don't think they mind, anyway. They don't know any different. Our dogs seem happy enough.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

As long as the animal is not beaten, or is kept in a small cage, I see no problem with keeping domestic animals, and even if it were wrong morally, Theres nothing that can be done about it now, it would mean killing or freeing billions of animals to roam free, and likely millions dying, with most likely over populating in cities leading to alot of other problems such as killing off local animals such as birds or small rodents, or even starving out natural predators of those small animals, we have reached the point no no return

If you a kind person and kind to animals and treat them well, it's better for you then someone else who maybe cruel to it, so infact you could be saving those animals from abuse from another person, but of course the fact that your taking in these animals only shows the demand for such pets and will only keep it going but it's still better then some other inhuman way if it were a problem.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Cats and dog are domestic animals since a very long time and they couldn't survive by themselves. Anyway, all other animals shouldn't be kept as pet (birds, snakes, fishes...). If someone pretends to love animals, then he shouldn't keep them in a cage.

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ther is nothing wrong with keeping pets , though i think they can survive easily on their own . its just a sort of twisted symbiosis me thinks

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Tell that to my cat, she ran away for 3 months (in a forest btw) and then one day she came back, man those ticks she had still haunts me in my nightmares! *shudders*.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Yeah, the cat came back, even 3 months after, didn't it? ;)

The cats have a certain independance. But they will always prefer the good food from home rather than searching for rests in the garbage.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Now there are already kinds of cats that couldn't survive if they lived on their own. Just look at the front legs of this cat!
http://www.russicats.ru/club/img/img008.gif

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Tell that to my cat, she ran away for 3 months (in a forest btw) and then one day she came back, man those ticks she had still haunts me in my nightmares! *shudders*.

Yes, amazing stuff. Cats. My cat ran away and lived in the nearby woods for 3 straight weeks. We thought it died or something. Then one day I saw it again while taking out the trash. It was so cool! I was like "holy shit, you're back!"

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

my old cat ran away for a night we whent searching then we found her in somebodys garden and she was stuck in a sand box the ones that the council use

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I have an amazing story :) My cat ran away and I thought it died or just got lost, so I tried to forget about her, then a month later while I was playing airsoft in the woods I saw her, at first I wasn't sure it was her, but she still had a cloor on, but the next part is even stranger. I went over to her and I saw her walk into a bush, I looked through the bush and there were literally 20-30 dead mice/birds half eaten, disgusting. Then we took her to the vet and they said she was fine, but she had fleas and one tick(that I knew of)

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Another one of my cats (right now I have two, I used to have three) tried to catch this big-ass pigeon once. She succeeded in getting it into her mouth on the fly-by, but it was stuck in her mouth, and her jaw couldn't move...it was the cutest thing, she just kept making whining noises.

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I'm only against four things when it comes to domestic animals.

1. Trying to domesticate an animal that was born in the wild, like a baby deer (I know people who have done this :uhm: ). If all it has ever known is being in a human home, it'll be happy...but if it was born wild, that's a totally different story.

2. De-clawing cats. The claws aren't actually removed, their middle digit is just cut off, so they can't extend them. I don't see the need for it. If you don't want a cat to sharpen its claws on your couch, then don't get a cat! Or get a couch you don't care about. The same goes for snipping the vocal chords of dogs so they don't bark.

3. Keeping them confined in a small area and never letting them out...especially if you give them no sources of amusement. My sister has a Budgie, and it's quite content to hump a little Tweety Bird statue she got for him for 95% of the day...so I don't think he's lacking in amusement.

4. Being irresponsible and not spaying or neutering your pet, and then letting them go outside when you have no intention of keeping any babies it may have. It's one thing if you raise the babies to sell them or something, but there are SO many cats and dogs without homes because of stuff like that.

My cat is an indoor cat...and she seems pretty content. I'm just really paranoid because there are a lot of kids who like to do horrible things to cats around here, and people who put poison in their yard to "get" animals who wander into their gardens (there have been a lot of arrests here for that, lately). She has a lot of things to play on and get exercise, and nowhere in the house is off-limits to her (one of her favorite spots is the top of the fridge). I often wish we lived out in the country, though, so she could run outside. I feel like it's unfair to her, but I did save her from going to the pound, so it's a tradeoff, I guess. Aww...I miss her. :( My ex got her, since he kept the apartment, and I can't have her here. I still get to visit her, though.

I don't think I'd ever have a dog unless I was going to live somewhere it'd have plenty of space to run, though. They're a lot more high maintenance than cats, and I don't think I could give it the attention it deserves. My cat gets attention whenever she wants it, but dogs are much less picky about that sort of thing and tend to want a lot more attention.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

My cat is an indoor cat...and she seems pretty content. I'm just really paranoid because there are a lot of kids who like to do horrible things to cats around here,

Argh! When I was like 8 years old I had an outdoor cat named Smokey (who was 7 years old at the time). One day I thought it would be fun to try putting a leash on her...but when I tried, she ran away, with the leash still around her neck.

She didn't come home for three days.

On the fourth day, my neighbor found her hung from a tree, using the leash that I put on her.

We know who it was who did it (there was this guy down the street who turned out to be a rapist, and his son was a fricking punk who swore and got into fights all the time, and he has a history of this kind of thing), but we couldn't prove it was him. We tried to find some article of clothing that maybe he snagged on a branch and got torn or ripped...but with no luck.

For like a week I thought it was my fault because I tried to put the leash on her in the first place. I thought the police were going to come get me.


I am most concerned about people who have no respect for living things. Remember that book "Shiloh" with that guy (Judd Travis) who was this conspiracy theorist NRA guy who liked to kick his dogs and shoot squirrels in his front yard with a rifle? That guy was a monster.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

That's horrible, Cataphract! :bawl:

I went to high school with some guys who thought it would be hilarious to microwave a cat. That sort of thing makes me feel physically ill. I just can't imagine doing that to a living creature...much less someone's beloved pet. It's just awful.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

I would not feel gulity for beating a man to death who has thought it would be and has mircowaved a living animal, or any other sort of abuse for that matter.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

I would.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Some people deserve justice, others revenge. If someone microwaved my cat, I would have my revenge.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

No one deserves what they have. No one deserves to live. It's just the way things are. Our "justice" is merely a concensus of the people on what they feel is right.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

I hope you are not a Hypi-christian... :Puzzled:

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

I like your title..."Oww my hands!"

And then Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first ban." (John 8:7)

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Micro-waved a cat? If I EVER saw someone do that, I would make sure they pay dearly for it. I would never resort to killing anyone over an animal, but I hate people who are cruel to animals. I really hate them. And I use the word hate strongly. People who torture other living things, humans or animals, are sick people.

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

:lol:

Re: Concerning Domestic Animals
 

Humans are animals (and very intelligent ones at that), in case you are not aware.