by CarrieVS » Sun Sep 13, 2015 12:58 am
I've had my cat since she was a kitten, and I mothered her a lot. I'm fairly sure she sees me as her mother, and I feel something akin to maternal feelings towards her. That's not anthopomorphising her. I don't refer to her as having human traits or interpret her behaviour as if she was a human doing the same thing.
That dog in that picture won't understand that the cat is a different species. Pets are part of the family, surely? Cats and dogs, certainly, form attachments and bonds with the family groups they live in, whether that's a group of blood relatives, unrelated animals, or other species. They don't have the capacity to understand the difference between them and their other-species family, or between a blood sibling and an unrelated animal they were raised with. I don't see why it's so outrageous to refer to them as relatives. I don't have a problem with anyone not seeing themselves as their pet's mother or father, but I do kind of have a problem with people having a problem with other people doing it, unless they're being weird about it or insisting you play along.
It can't be a problem just that a pet and owner are not biological relatives, unless you'll say an adopted human child shouldn't call his or her adoptive parents Mum and Dad. I'm not saying that's precisely the same thing, but I hear people saying 'I didn't give birth to my dog' when they complain about others calling pets their babies, and that's a strange argument if you actually stop and think about it.
I have considerable distaste for people who actually treat their animals like human children, but the relationship a cat has with human owners or guardians (I honestly think it's inaccurate to say I own my cat. She's an outdoor cat and as such is a free agent who chooses to stay with us), who raised it from a kitten, is nearer to what it would have with its mother than anything else.
A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.