I am a parent and a pet owner. I see no problem with caring for both within a household. Pets are better equated with friends than children. They are wonderful for older people whose children have left. They are great for those in nursing homes and those alone. They love, protect, and help their owners, why would they not be loved. There is love enough to go around for children and pets and everything else. If you don’t like pets, that’s your right, it is my right to keep and love them, and when they die, I cry, the whole family cries.
But I see no evidence adoptive parents treat their children differently. I know parents who have both natural and adopted children and they say and act as if the feelings are the same.
I can say anything I want; I’m making an observation based not only on my own feelings but the fact that more parents than I can count report the same thing.
Since it is obvious that 99.99% of people generally are not obnoxious twits, you’ll have to convince me that there’s something about parenthood that induces that condition.
Any other human being? (Paging Mr. Godwin…)
Did I just get called an obnoxious twit?
Oh piffle. My value system is that random human strangers are not as valuable to me as those I know, which includes my pets. For parents to assume that their children must be more important to me is, if nothing else, very self centered.
I already answered this.
Ya know, this is the part I don’t get about these folks. They claim to love their pet, yet they would sacrifice that “beloved” pet for any other human. And we don’t even have to get Godwin in here, there are tons of humans that do not deserve to be placed above any cat!
I’ll hazard that it’s your value system that people arguing with you have a problem with, dear. I won’t speak for anyone else, but my value system requires that I value human life above animal life, and that I protect children in preference to adults (other things being equal, of course). I love Mrs. Whatsit, and despise–oh, let’s say Ann Coulter–but faced with the choice between their lives, I’d feel obliged to sacrifice my cat rather than Coulter.
Which is not to say I’d be happy with that choice.
Some of us don’t believe the world revolves around us and what WE want. I love my cats, but that doesn’t make it right to kill a human being to save my cat. It’s not always about who I love, or what would make me happiest. There are times when what’s right is not what’s easy or convenient for me.
Well, if someone hurt my wife or one of my nieces, my sisters, or my father, and I then I had to choose between that person’s life and Mrs. Whatsit’s, the dude’s toast. But that’d just be revenge.
This is what keeps me coming back to the curlcoat threads. She has no idea what “Godwin” refers to, but still feels compelled to chime in on it with smug self assurance. She’s like a bitter, aging Jean Teasdale.
(wanted to ETA: now watch curlcoat come in and say “I’ve met Jean Teasdale, I’m nothing like that cow!”)
Well, no. You seem to be saying that if pet owners experienced the same emotional pain at the loss of their pet that parents do at the loss of a child, they would never have pets.
Well, if that sort of emotional pain actually made any sort of a difference at all in the decision to take on the responsibility of nurturing another being (human or animal), then why would parents bother having children?
Either you’re trying to say that pet owners really don’t feel the same emotional loss as parents, or maybe you’re trying to say that the benefits of having children outweigh the risk of losing them at a higher ratio than for pets. Or both.
At any rate, you can’t really speak for anyone other than yourself when you say that the love you feel for children is greater than the love you feel for pets. Obviously curlcoat feels very deeply about her pets, and to be honest I find that neither weird nor offensive.
If a prospective parent knew for a fact that any child of his/hers was fated to die in no more than 16 years (say, because of some genetic condition), then yes, I believe most prospective parents would choose not to have a child.
But the day we buy or whelp Rover, we know that we’re going to be around to watch him croak, or even help him croak if he’s just too old at the age of 16. And afterward we cry a bit and then get on with our lives, no biggie. We’re mentally prepared for that when we get a pet. I don’t think any parent is mentally prepared at the outset to watch/do the same for their child.
(knocks on wood furiously again)
I’ll hazard that your problem with Ann Coulter is a disagreement on political type things, and not that she is evil, hon. Unfortunately, not all humans are as nice as Ann Coulter and some of them are actually axe murderers and other not so lovely things. Given the choice between that axe murderer and Mrs Whatsit (the cat), would you still sacrifice Mrs W?
I didn’t say “a” human, I said any other human. It also has nothing to do with what is convenient for you.
What about my post makes you think I don’t know what Godwin’s Law is? Perhaps it is you who didn’t understand Steve MB’s post? Or did you not bother to read it in the rush to try to prove yourself superior?
Well, yes, you bloody fool, in a hypothetical scenario where the person being chosen deserves to die anyway, why wouldn’t you choose the kill a person who deserves it? The life of the animal doesn’t even have to enter into that equation; presumably if you have a chance to run over John Wayne Gacy you’d do it for the sake of running him over.
What’s creepy is the idea that a human would sacrifice an ordinary human for the sake of an animal.
I had to Google Jean Teasdale since I don’t know who she is - apparently a columnist for the Onion?
Actually, no, I tend to believe in the justice system and would not just run over someone because they had been accused of a crime.
However, that had not been stated in here until I forced you to do so. Before this it has been how can I even think of wanting to save my pet instead of some random stranger, and the assumption has been that all random strangers are worthy human beings that deserve to be saved rather than, well, run over.
Are you beginning to get it yet, you bloody fool?