No, Don’t Give Up Your Dogs and Cats

My cat Max. Does this floofy face look like it could survive in the wild?

Do dogs exist? This may sound like a frivolous question, but hear me out. Because of selective breeding and other human intervention in canine genomics, the word “dog” refers to a panoply of domesticated creatures. It’s difficult to devise a definition of “dog” expansive enough to include breeds like chihuahuas and huskies, French poodles and St. Bernards, while also excluding closely related species, like wolves, foxes, and coyotes.

This week, former lifestyles editor Ellie Violet Bramley wrote an essay for The Guardian entitled The case against pets: is it time to give up our cats and dogs? Bramley, a dog owner herself, admits pet ownership brings humans great satisfaction and wellbeing. However, the relationship is unequal: pets descended from predator species are unable to roam, hunt, and otherwise fulfill their biological imperatives. Bramley considers these restrictions cruel.

I appreciate Bramley's point. As a cat dad, I know my boys feel cribbed when kept indoors, and have lost their natural predatory instincts; the pigeons living in the tree outside my door apparently enjoy taunting my boys when I permit them outdoor time. Imagine every rottweiler kept as apartment pets by city dwellers, who think taking them to the dog park on Saturdays is sufficient exercise time. These animals atrophy for lack of natural environment.

However, Bramley relies on what rhetoricians call an “essentialist” argument, that members of some group have some shared essence that we can’t define, but we know exists. In Bramley’s view, cats and dogs haven’t become essentially separate from their ancestors. Dogs remain, in essence, wolves, while housecats remain African wildcats. This is why evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins rails against essentialist arguments: they blunt our ability to see change.

Bramley’s essentialism becomes visible if we even briefly imagine releasing our household pets. Will your teacup maltipoo crossbreed successfully bag enough prey to survive, breed, and integrate into the wild? Doubtful. Though Jack London romanticized dogs’ untamed nature in The Call of the Wild, most pet owners know their beloved critters have the survival instincts of a cabbage. They’ve adapted to live with human companionship and support.

I’ve written about this before. First, “nature” doesn’t really exist; humans shape every environment we encounter, for good or ill. Simultaneously, though, “nature” is remarkably resilient, rushing into niches humans leave vacant and creating their own adaptable ecosystems. Household animals have become what James Paul Gee calls man-made monsters, biological entities adapted to live with and serve human needs. Other man-made monsters include pigeons, racoons, and… humans.

My cat Pele, trying to channel his ancestral African wildcat

A popular internet meme describes cats as “apex predators” trapped in cute, fluffy bodies. But examinations of feral cats’ stomach contents reveal they mostly survive on garbage, not prey. That’s why feral cats proliferate in cities and towns, but scarcely exist in wilderness environments: because without humans, they’re helpless. With proper veterinary care and nutrition, household cats frequently live twenty years, but feral cats’ life expectancy is about three years.

Dogs, especially mutts, are somewhat more adaptable, but not much. The numbers speak for themselves: Britannica estimates there are approximately 65,000–78,000 wolves in North America, while best estimates indicate around ninety million household dogs in the United States alone. Friendly dogs flourish in human companionship, while standoffish wolves suffer. If boredom is the price of prosperity, well, millions of human cube farmers can appreciate that.

If Americans, just Americans, turned their pets loose, most wouldn’t flourish. Millions would stand outside their former owners’ doors, howling to come back inside where the food and water bowls live. Those that accepted their fate would, mostly, get devoured by coyotes, raptors, and other predators, which would cause predators’ numbers to swell, and would distort the ecosystem. The few surviving pets would become predators or scavengers themselves.

Human intervention in animal genomics made these changes, and these changes cannot be unmade. Our pets, livestock, and scavenger species exist, regardless of Ellie Violet Bramley’s moral qualms. Because humans created these man-made monsters, we have a responsibility to steward them. This means spaying and neutering, as Bob Barker insisted, but also making sure cute fuzzy animals have the exercise, mental stimulation, and pack companionship they need.

Our ability to steward our domesticated animals parallels our ability to steward the entire environment. Our pets suffer from the same late-capitalist demands currently causing rapid global warming: exorbitant working hours, habitat destruction, and a carbon-dependent economy. Relinquishing our responsibilities to our pets won’t make anyone happier, and could blunt our ability to comprehend the pressures destroying the world outside of our man-made doors.