Hi. I’m trying to come up with examples of things that are done to animals – ideally by people – that have no adverse consequence but that, if they were done to humans, would make people freak out.
For instance, mother cats often carry their kittens by the skin on the back of their necks. (Some cat owners do, too.) An ignorant person might say, “That’s inhumane. How would YOU like to be carried by the skin on the back of your neck.” That view ignores the fact that people and cats are very different.
Similarly, people regularly feed dogs by throwing scraps of food on the floor. No one would say that it’s inhumane based on the “How-would-you-like-to-have-to-eat-the-floor?” rationale.
Can you help with other examples of things that might appear to be inhumane to an animal but that, for those who are familiar with the animal’s biology, are actually harmless (or maybe even something the animal likes)?
You’re not supposed to do that to adult cats, though. You can grab them by the scruff to calm them down, but you’re not supposed to carry them by it the way mother cats carry their kittens.
I feed our cats little bits of raw chicken when we have chicken for dinner. They get raw chicken because most cooked foods in our house contain onions, garlic, or both, neither of which are OK for cats to have. I would, of course, never feed raw chicken to a human. Cats have more acidic stomachs than humans do, and can deal with the bacteria in raw chicken better than we can. The cats seem to like it, at least based on how they BEG for chicken when we get it out.
I would not want to have the ends of my toes pared with a sharp knife prior to a manicure.
I would not like to have said manicure followed by a procedure in which the tips each fingernail is leveled with a piece of hot steel, which is then nailed to the fingernail tip.
For a dozen or so years I made my chihuahua walk up and down the steps in our house. Never even thought twice about it. Once he got older, I suddenly realized that the human equivalent would consist of climbing onto (or off of) a 6-foot box 13 times over at impossible speeds.
You could also add to the list
[ul]
[li]Use manual pressure to express their anal glands.[/li][li]Rip out their ear hair with a hemostat.[/li][li]Make them ride in a small, drafty box on top of a moving car :D.[/li][/ul]
It seems to be more common for vets to offer this option, for spay/neuter and other problems. In the last few years we’ve adopted 3 cats, and we were offered pain management after the desexing for all of them. One of the boys is prone to UTIs, and each vet (two emergency vets and his regular vet) has offered pain meds for each episode. We always opt for the pain management, by the way. I think that being in stress from pain will delay the healing, but that’s just my layman’s opinion.
Hmmm…and all this time I’ve been removing my husband’s ear hair with tweezers. I’ll try the hemostat, thanks! But he gets nervous enough when I drive, so I don’t think that I have to make him ride in a box on top of the car. Even if it WOULD mean that I didn’t have to listen to his remarks about my driving.
And I don’t believe that I’m going to share that much info about our sex life. Yes, even I have some limits as to what I’ll share.