Pet ownership and the vegan life - hmmm... as a vegan pet owner, all I can say is that every day is a bloody moral battle, and the answer is really, really obvious. Vegan or non-vegan, pet ownership is horribly problematic, and fundamentally wrong. Being vegan just throws this conclusion in my face like a handful of whipping corn-based cat crunchies every day. That's the only real difference.

Here's the scenario - I have a fridge full of veggies, tofu, nutritional yeast, textured vegetable protein, soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, hemp milk - you name it - it's there. I can make you anything vegan - faux turkey loaf, gravy, chocolate cake, ANYTHING. It's great! Plus there isn't one single product in my house that has been tested on animals, and nothing made of leather or wool either. Cool! Until you look in my freezer...

There you will find a plethora of frozen and ground up dead animals: turkey, chicken, goat, elk, moose, rabbit, to name a few. It alternates, depending on the food allergy requirements of my unwittingly lucky alive, unground, and unfrozen "companion animals".

For a wee while I thought, well Jen, you feed unmedicated free range dead animals. So you are okay, no need to feel guilty. Better than feeding factory farmed crap byproducts made from animals who suffered in life and are rendered down to worthless "meal" in death.

But it's not really. Because all "food" animals end up at the slaughterhouse. And wrong is just wrong. There can't be varying degrees - it's either cruel and needless or it's not. Animals either live long free natural lives, or they don't. Growth hormones and "free range" don't factor into the cold reality that all these animals - from the free range bison to the factory farmed chicken, from the deer-farmed venison to the feedlot beef, end up slaughtered for our benefit. And this "benefit" extends beyond the slaughterhouse - it extends to include what we saccharinely call "companion animals" - it extends from the urban border collie (who goes to daycare every weekday) to the domestic shorthair cat - who eats veterinary-endorsed ground cornmeal and chicken byproduct meal (preserved with mixed tocopherals) while he gains weight and watches the caged lovebird pull its feathers out .... eventually Mr. Domestic Shorthair Cornguy becomes diabetic because he's a true carnivore who's been fed cereal all his life...where was I? Oh yes, ALL these animals lead very UNnantural lives, and the most pathetic wretches of them -the bird in the cage, and those who have their throats slit at the slaughterhouse - lead lives of suffering that are ended in unspeakable pain and cruelty.

WHY?

Well, I guess because a lot of us still like to eat animals. But also because a lot of us like to own animals, and the cats are carnivores, so we have to feed them somthing, right?

Well, I guess, as long as we support owning them. As long as we buy into the multi billion dollar (and very aptly named) Pet Industry

The solution to becoming the ultimate example of the vegan lifestyle? Don't own pets.

And no, that DOESN'T mean euthanising your cat. Geez. Just advocate for spay and neuter. Advocate for trapping and sterilizing feral cats. Advocate for no yard dogs/guard dogs. Advocate for no rodeos. Advocate for no veal. For no foie gras. For no cetaceans in captivity. For no zoos. For no petting farms. For no battery hens. For no feedlots.

And let's not forget advocacy for the less glamerous, but no less important victims of human whim - the voiceless prisoners who "teach children about responsibility" (a very odd notion, unless these are children who have their hearts set on being prison wardens)- the fish in tanks, the snakes in tanks, the iguanas in tanks, the birds in cages, the gerbils in cages, the rabbits in cages, the degus, hamsters, chinchillas, sugar gliders, guinea pigs...all victims of the "pet industry". Advocate for them, and by by all moral standards you are thus an advocate of no pet ownership. You are an advocate of the idea that no one species should presume to own any other species or attempt to bend any other species to its will. Bad news: this includes domestic cats and dogs. Good news: All your vegan quandries are solved.

Now I duck, because whenever I say that we shouldn't own other species - the most obvious of which is cats and dogs - it always pisses someone off, and someone accuses me of wanting to kill all cats and dogs, then I have to explain that no, I don't want to kill anything, I just want to spay and neuter EVERYTHING and phase out the "ownership" of other species. Just like how we don't own humans (slaves) anymore.

A very wise friend once told me that good pet owners do not justify pet ownership, no more than good slave owners justified slavery, and that the root of all animal cruely lay in the ownership of animals. At the time I gave her words little consideration - I blew them off as radical opinion, intended to shock. But now I know her only intention was to promote serious thought and consideration. And everyone should seriously consider the reasons behind, and results of, one species holding dominion over another. Including, and first and foremost addressing, pet ownership.

It's no big deal. Realizing, recognizing, and relinquishing ownership of another species is just a logical and moral progession for mankind. And it's the only answer to the vegan household cat connundrum...