Pet ownership (wiki)

Technical problems, questions, comments, and suggestions for the forum and wiki.

User avatar
vegan81vzla
Full Member
Posts: 137
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2015 11:30 pm
Diet: Vegan

Re: Pet ownership (wiki)

Post by vegan81vzla »

Yikes, thanks for quoting me
User avatar
NonZeroSum
Master of the Forum
Posts: 1159
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 6:30 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: North Wales, UK

Re: Pet ownership (wiki)

Post by NonZeroSum »

vegan81vzla wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2017 3:11 am Yikes, thanks for quoting me
Hey veganvzla, haven't been able to formulate your quote into part of the advice page yet.

What you said about your philosophy being a humanist one, breaking our parasitic relationship with animals sounded existentialist to me, but you are also a christian, have you ever read anything on Kierkegaard?

There is something there about authenticity or only valuing intellectual relationships in the not seeing voluntary rescuing of animals as efficient use of individuals time, and not good for the animal because they aren't able to chose their own social hierarchy, as Eisel defines it as pride.

Could you formulate it into a virtue/ personal growth project? Or add to the discussion on terms - pet vs companion vs captive? Or give your alternative perspective on a divine command philosophy on domestic animals?

Advice Page so far:


Companion Animal Care

Introduction...


Contents

1 Facts and information
1.1 Adopt don't shop
1.2 Spay/Neuter your pet
1.3 Diet
1.4 Exercise
1.5 Waste
2 Activism
2.1 Effective Activism
2.1.1 Adoption/Rescue
2.1.2 Donation/ other Activism
2.2 Personal Growth/Virtue Activism
2.2.1 Word usage
2.3 Policy
3 Alternative Perspectives


Facts and information

Adopt don't shop
Generally it is preferable to adopt pets from local shelters and have them neutered than it is to buy pets like a commodity from pet stores. The pet stores sources are breeder mills where animals are bred in often unacceptable conditions in cages etc and excess animals are often culled. Even in rare cases where pet stores source from cruelty-free breeders, there are many animals in shelters that are actually in need of a forever home so it is better to adopt them than buy from pet stores.
Spay/Neuter your pet
Spaying and neutering can help to reduce the desire to roam that make your cats happier as indoor pets. . . the only thing more cruel than leaving a cat intact with a powerful sex drive and keeping it away from any mates would be to let the cat out doors to breed multiple generations of feral kittens who are doomed to suffer follow the Golden Rule here assuming you could never have sex you had no way to release any sexual frustration remember cats don't even have porn would you rather have a stronger sex drive or a weaker sex drive in such a situation I would want to be spayed or neutered to reduce my suffering.
Diet

Cats

Female cats can be fed vegan, if it's a properly formulated diet.[1]

Male cats can have urinary tract problems, so generally speaking, it's hard to feed most of them vegan.

I would recommend feeding male cats partly vegan, and partly freegan meat. Insects or worms might be another option to freegan meat, which are less sentient and more sustainable than tetrapod meat.

Exercise

It's important you exercise your pets to the full range their bodies needs, with big dogs that can mean two 1 and half hour walks every day, and with cats testing to see if they'll will walk with you on a leash.

Also using lots of interactive toys with them each night.

Cats

If you live near a main road, it's not recommended you let your cat out, where it can easily get run over by traffic.

Domestic cats are also highly skilled predators that are glutenous for enjoying the hunt more than the food, which means often torturing their prey and giving you half-dead animals as presents. Unlike the common ancestor they share with wildcats which are quick killers, consume all their food and have a working niche that is threatened by domestic cats.

If you want to take one step towards limiting the carnage, the RSPB recommends to:

Keep your cat indoors when birds are most vulnerable — at least an hour before sunset and an hour after sunrise — especially between March and July when baby birds may be out of the nest waiting to be fed. Also, keep your cat indoors after bad weather to allow birds to come out and feed.

You can also build an outdoor enclosed cat run and some inside the house to effectively increase your cats play area.
Waste

Dogs and particularly cat feces can be quite toxic and produces a lot of methane if left on a landfill to rot, finding an allotment or empty plot of land far away from houses to hot compost is the best solution.


Activism

Effective Activism

Adoption/Rescue

Adopting pets probably does not qualify as effective altruism due to the large cost and small impact.

It's also not entirely clear whether adoption is good for a cat or not (even among consequentialists, this is debated). The ideal case seems to be rescuing two (Citation needed) female cats from no kill shelters which are fed vegan (let meat eaters adopt the male cats and feed them the meat they may need to avoid urinary issues) kept indoors to prevent them from killing animals or being harmed themselves, and with enrichment like a cat patio or other activities. Yet we do not know what extent of boredom, confinement, or isolation over a lifetime make it better to have been euthanized. Be mindful that adopting an animal and making it miserable is probably worse than not adopting at all and keep in mind the difficulties involved in providing for the animal before making that commitment.

Donation/ other Activism

With respect to donation and volunteering, a disproportionate amount of current effort and money is devoted to pet rescue, so in terms of contributions to any efforts (even more effective ones like TNR) the point of diminishing returns is probably reached much sooner than with funding efforts to reduce farmed animal suffering.

Personal Growth/Virtue Activism

Existentialists see mountains of food waste, a disorganized network of rescue efforts and an untapped reservoir of compassion that simply needs to be directed towards simple tools for ending the suffering of these domesticated animals. By making the choice to be good industrious owners, we affirm that it is a valuable thing to do for our pets and those around us.

If you have the capacity and heart to, adopting the most vicious, scarred, mangey looking old pets from low demand, over-populated, no kill shelters is the most ethical choice you can make, but any will do for extending that carrier capacity of loving homes.

Enticing feral cats with freegan, vegan food will significantly improve their well-being to know they can have a food source they can rely on. Just be mindful that if you pay feral cats any attention they can return with a half-dead bird as a present in return. Feeding may also result in increased fertility.

Word usage

Some vegans and pet lovers argue that the terminology we use to refer to pets and the adoption process is also important, and promote terms like "animal companion" rather than pet, and dog/cat/etc. "parent" rather than owner to break the linguistic conventions that reinforce their status as property rather than family members. It's unclear what, if any, effect this has on social psychology, but evidence of marketing efforts to push these terms may suggest it does have an effect on the bottom-line for pet services, and thus at least the depth of owners' pockets when caring for them which may be a reflection of mindset.

Policy

Campaigns, petition your representative to...


Alternative Perspectives

Deontologists hold a variety of views on the subject, from no responsibility and always wrong to own them, to total responsibility and always right to feed them meat and let them hunt. This view can be very attractive to people, because we like to see ourselves as separate from nature, and see natural things as morally neutral or good even when they can be cruel or harmful to individuals. It's very easy to overlook the consequences and brush them off as nature doing what it does.


________ Talk Page _________
vegan81vzla wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:34 pm my personal opinion on this is that I don't think owning animals is vegan, period. Feral cats can be dangerous to wildlife so they should be euthanized.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:02 pm Why?
vegan81vzla wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:59 pm Because I am vegan to break with animal-human parasitic relationship, not to sustain it
brimstoneSalad wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:39 pm The relationship can be symbiotic, when it is one of care and companionship.

"Ownership" has nothing to do with it, as long as people aren't harming them.

Cats, of course, aren't ideal since they are obligate carnivores, but it seems reasonable enough just not to breed them and adopt instead. If we feed them vegan, or lower animals, we can care for them and let them live out their lives compassionately without causing great harm.
PsYcHo wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:55 pmI notice you said it it better to euthanize (polite word for murder) feral cats. What about sterilization, as opposed to euthanization?
brimstoneSalad wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 8:34 pm I think he wants to kill the cats to save the mice and birds that the cats would kill if left wild.

Sometimes feral cats kill so many birds as to make local populations threatened, so there is some environmental argument for that too.
I can kind of understand it. Cats also are not well suited for the wild, so feral cats don't always live very good lives.

But it's much more kind of adopt the cats into warm and safe homes, as pets, rather than to kill them.
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
User avatar
NonZeroSum
Master of the Forum
Posts: 1159
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 6:30 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: North Wales, UK

Re: Pet ownership (wiki)

Post by NonZeroSum »

Killing feral cats is not the solution, and here's proof! TinyKittens.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seEpf5L8x0M

Published on Jul 18, 2017

More about our rescue work: http://TinyKittens.com

Organizations like PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and Project Cat trap and kill feral cats. They advocate *against* Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR): http://bit.ly/2tljdnk

Their actions tell the world feral cats are disposable. They reinforce perceptions that feral cats are not worth spaying, neutering or compassionate care. Euthanasia doesn't erase the hardships these cats may have already endured, it only ensures they will never experience joy.

To solve cat overpopulation, we must change the narrative about feral cats. Instead of reinforcing the belief that ferals are disposable, let's start talking about how remarkable they are, so more people will care.

If you'd like to be a part of the humane solution, join or start a Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) effort in your community. Volunteer, donate, foster, adopt and become an advocate for feral cats. Make sure you research rescue organizations working with feral cats, and only support those who understand that feral cats are worthy of compassionate care.

Imagine what we all would have missed if PETA or Project Cat had been the ones trapping ferals in our area. All of these beloved ferals would have been euthanized, along with the hundreds we've TNR'ed:

Grandpa Mason and Cassidy the #MiracleKitten at TinyTuxies
With a Little Hope, Faith & Charity
Calvin's Quartet
The Princess and the E.
Skye the Sink Cat
Greener Pastures: Corsica & Her Fabergé Egg
Miss Radley & Co.
QueEnara, Jet Set GO
Tiger Buffy Tales
Mr T Brady, Bill and Pliny- from the forest to the beach
Sloaney, Queen of My Heart
Maralix Take A Chance On Me
QB & Macey - From Hisses to Kisses
Ramses - Urban Feral to Country King
NoElf - Sisters in Spirit
Squidy Pyncy Joy-Joy

There are too many to even list! Which is actually pretty amazing proof that TNR + treat / socialize / adopt IS effective, and that feral community cats are WORTH SAVING.
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
User avatar
brimstoneSalad
neither stone nor salad
Posts: 10273
Joined: Wed May 28, 2014 9:20 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Pet ownership (wiki)

Post by brimstoneSalad »

NonZeroSum wrote: Sun Jul 23, 2017 6:18 am Killing feral cats is not the solution, and here's proof! TinyKittens.com
[...]
There are too many to even list! Which is actually pretty amazing proof that TNR + treat / socialize / adopt IS effective, and that feral community cats are WORTH SAVING.
Not only did I not see any proof in that, unfortunately I saw no evidence. I see emotional appeals and one-sided anecdotes.
In order to evaluate whether something is worth doing, we need to know the cost which the TNR people don't seem to like to share.

I'd love to see if there are some resources that really discuss the expenses and the opportunity costs. Without that, and having some idea of the cost of veterinary care and neutering/spaying, I have to assume it's not effective activism at all.
Worst case (when they don't return) they may be spending a lot of time and money to get these cats adopted when cats in shelters are just being killed in their places.

I think calcium chloride injection sterilization (not as reliable and maybe a little more dangerous) for neutering can be done for around $4 though and requires less training; that's plausibly almost as cost effective as euthanization. That can only be done for males, though, and females are the practical source of population increase (miss just one male and you still have a problem, and it's almost impossible to get all of them).

I would think trucking the females off to somewhere out of the city that's fenced in to keep the males out might be more cost effective, if you could find a freegan food to bring with you.
User avatar
NonZeroSum
Master of the Forum
Posts: 1159
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 6:30 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: North Wales, UK

Re: Pet ownership (wiki)

Post by NonZeroSum »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Sun Jul 23, 2017 3:01 pm Not only did I not see any proof in that, unfortunately I saw no evidence. I see emotional appeals and one-sided anecdotes.
In order to evaluate whether something is worth doing, we need to know the cost which the TNR people don't seem to like to share.

I'd love to see if there are some resources that really discuss the expenses and the opportunity costs. Without that, and having some idea of the cost of veterinary care and neutering/spaying, I have to assume it's not effective activism at all.
Worst case (when they don't return) they may be spending a lot of time and money to get these cats adopted when cats in shelters are just being killed in their places.
Yeah you're talking about cost effective, I didn't see them make that claim anywhere, they're talking about humanely effective compared to being killed, in response to claims from the other side that feral cats that aren't socialized should always be killed out of mercy. This wasn't their experience as the rescue feral cats often showed signs of contentment becoming a comforter to rescue kittens and them in return.

As I've said before I'm not going to discourage any advocacy that promotes adoption and talks openly about the overpopulation problem. If this kind of activism draws more peoples attention and brings awareness about ways you can help I'm all for it.

I'd like meta-analysis too, just posted this because it was a slickly produced heartwarming compilation, I don't think that's a bad thing for bringing advocacy to the overpopulation issue. There's a problem with TNR groups and kill groups working over the top of each other, and the article they posted in the description drew my attention to that, as well as their live cams advocacy, ways you can map feral cats in your area, and simple adoption forms.

How many people do you think can be encouraged to map feral cats in their area if they think it's going to be able to be trapped and returned to the environment it knows? How many could be encouraged to entice feral cats with food until they're socialized and can be brought to a shelter to be spayed?

Now how many do you think can be encouraged to map feral cats to be killed, and how many to entice feral cats into a trap to be killed?
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
Post Reply