I get very offended that other people observe that still other people get offended pretty easily by people getting offended 
You take that back!
I personally haven’t met any of these people who make the “my pet is the same as a child” claim but I think the easiest difference between the two would be answering the question “Would you sacrifice your own life for your pet/child?”
Most parents would say yes to that and most pet owners no.
And for the pet owners that would say yes, well they’re just plain nuts.
My dogs and cat are as important to me as people say their children are to them. Since I have no children, I cannot know how parents feel about their kids but all of their descriptions match how I feel about my dogs and cat. For example, when Psycho Kitty was having surgery recently I sat in the truck in the parking lot until they were done, even tho I could easily have gone home and come back. But there was no way I was leaving until I knew she was OK.
I have never liked children, so I have no way of knowing how parents feel. That they can be insulted by the idea that I love my dogs and cat as much as they love their children is their problem, not mine.
Maybe ignorance isn’t quite it, maybe lack of experience isn’t quite it . . . maybe sort of a vibe of emotional stuntedness? Pet owners may say not to trust someone who doesn’t like animals, but there’s something I don’t feel quite right about regarding people who are obsessive about their pets. (I mean off the deep end kind of obsessive, not your ordinary dog or cat owner.) Kind of a tinge of misanthropism or social maladjustment, wherein one finds animal relationships more fulfilling than human ones. That I find kind of creepy.
It is a different order of affection. You’ll never look at your cat or dog and think “It’s half me, and I *made *it.” You’ll never show your dog photos of your grandparents and explain how their decisions shaped her life.
There’s whole emotional bombs that go off in your soul when you see the baby has it’s father’s ears or when you realise that this is how your mother felt when she held you for the first time - it’s stepping into another aspect of maturity where you are responsible for another human being.
It changes who you are. A pet owner is not a parent. Love your dogs and cats, you’re still not a parent. Love them instead of having kids, you’re still not a parent.
Say that it’s the same because you’re not a parent? No - you are **not **a parent and it’s not the same.
Your example is laughable. “Sat in the truck in the parking lot,” indeed.
I had a coworker who was childless and very attached to her dachshund. When he died, at a ripe old age, she thought she should get 3 days off work as one would if a close relative died.
She also got quite wound up about people who asked when she’d be getting another dog. He was an individual, see, and not replaceable. But when another coworker had a miscarriage the first words out of her mouth were, “Well, but you can get pregnant again!” Because it wasn’t like our coworker had 16 years to get attached to this fetus, unlike she and her dog.
I find it offensive, but comically so, when child-owners get in high dudgeon about how no one else can know how special they feel, and how offensive and rude it is for anyone else to compare their feelings to the child-owner’s special snowflake emotions.
I’m not insulted, but it sure isn’t the same - at least, for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people.
Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that if someone owned a cat and then had a child and did not favour love of the child over that of the cat, I’d think there was something wrong with them.
Obvious (and not uncommon) example: if the child had an allergy to the cat, so that one could only keep one or the other. How many parents would give up the child for adoption and keep the cat?
I’m not offended, I just think the comparison is absurd. Having been both parent and pet owner, I’m in a better position to judge the comparison - as are all parents who have also owned pets.
Really, the “argument” is somewhat akin to virgins strenuously arguing that masturbation is just as fulfilling in every way as a sexual relationship. It isn’t an offensive argument per se, but it simply attracts rolling eyes among those who are not virgins - it may well be true for some people, but the vast majority of the population, having experienced both, claim there is a fundamental emotional difference - those non-virgins really think they are so damned special. 
But I think that’s because we’ve all been there. We’ve all been, at some time in our lives, not-parents. So we know how not-parents feel, because we know how we felt. And we know how parents feel, because we are parents. Not-parents can never know how parents feel because, well, they’re not parents.
The list of things I can sympathize with but not empathize with is vast! I can sympathize with a war veteran, but I can only “know how he feels” intellectually. I can sympathize with an elderly woman losing her husband to Alzheimer’s, but again, only intellectually. I can imagine how a circus performer feels on the flying trapeze, but I’ll never know. For me to tell them “I know just how you feel, because I’ve been shopping at Macy*s during the Christmas season, lost my cat to an impacted hairball and I’ve been on playground swings before,” is just ridiculous. And, yeah, insulting.
It’s one thing to try and share stories to create a bond. It’s another to claim equivalence of experience when you’ve not experienced both things.
I call foul on this instance of the over-used and extremely tired “special snowflake” expression. People who think they are “special snowflakes” think that NOBODY in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD can ever understand how they really feel. Because they are special and unique, like a snowflake, you see. Whereas the parents in your hypothetical example are just saying that non-parents don’t understand how they feel. Other parents, of which there are legion, understand just fine. No special snowflakes involved.
Sorry, but the use of the phrase “special snowflake” makes me feel all face-burny.
Comedian Jeff Stilson said it best:
“Fluffy may be cute, and you may love Fluffy. But Fluffy’s not getting a liver transplant.”
I took a day (maybe it was 2) when my last cat died. I couldn’t go to work because I was too upset. I didn’t ask for bereavement leave though.
Pisses me off when people ask that as well. It took years after the loss of my Shadow before I could even think about having another cat in my life. If one of the people that asked me right away if I was going to get another cat had a miscarriage, I’d be tempted to say what your coworker did. Though I’d like to think I had more tact that.
No, they’re not. They’re insisting on it with much protestation of specialness and with little hesitation in calling the other side immature and stunted. They’re whiny, they’re getting mad, they’re shouting. They’re denigrating the claims of others and asserting their subjective feelings are universally superior.
I wouldn’t mind if child-owners just said there’s a difference, but they don’t always do that. Just look at this thread. Too often they imply there’s something wrong with the other side; too often they get angry that someone said something that implies their experience is less “special,” and they retaliate.
It’s snowing!
This might make them obnoxious, but it does not make them snowflakes. A snowflake is unique; there is no other snowflake just like it. I am standing by my anti-special-snowflake-metaphor assertion here.
On topic, it does not offend me particularly when pet owners claim that their experience is exactly like that of having a child. I just shrug and figure that someday, they might realize they’re wrong. Or maybe they won’t; either way, no skin off my back.
So, how would you react if a parent with a cat put the kid up for adoption because the cat was allergic to the kid? 
Myself, I do think that the emotional bond between parent and child ought to be a lot deeper than that between adult and pet; but I’m hardly going to care much if someone asserts otherwise - unless they are a parent. In which case I’ll think they aren’t a very good parent.
“Child-owners?” :rolleyes: Who’s denigrating whom?
Put it this way: if one is a capable, loving parent, then I doubt that anyone would question one’s ability to be a loving, responsible pet owner.
It does not necessarily work the other way around.
No more so than a good auto driver could be assumed to be a competent airline pilot.
If I protested to a pilot’s convention that I knew just what it was like to fly a 747 because I drive to work every day, I expect the pilots wouldn’t be offended, they’d just think I was a sheltered, ignorant dweeb.
I would. For the reason I stated up-thread. Animals are not people.
Just because someone is a capable, loving, kind, nurturing, helpful, thoughful, etc, parent, it doesn’t mean squat as to how they raise an animal. It’s two different skill sets. And that’s the problem. People who adopt animals and then treat them exactly like children are doing their pets a disservice.