When Fido's Just Another Mouth to Feed

Your Pet is Dumber Than Your Kids,

and Refuses to Get a Job

Most of us think we have moral principles. Scared into us with the loving Jesus/vengeful Jehovah routine, good cop/bad cop style. Taught, or beaten into us, by loving parents. Or, if you are lucky, by logical consideration and enlightened self-interest.

But with no money, no food, no job, and/or no home, principles get flexible.

How can you possibly buy “pet food” when you don’t have enough food for the kids? On the other hand, with a little garlic salt and boiled macaroni, you may be able to fool the kids into eating Scrappy Mutt Bargain Chunk Pet Food Product. It’s mostly corn and soybeans anyhow; with a little milk and sugar you can fool ‘em at breakfast too! If they complain, let ‘em eat it dry, on the floor, with the dog--they’ll think it’s fun!

(Cheap Side Note: My kids’ dogs survived for years on table scraps, leftovers, and splattered critters on asphalt. Sure, we gave ‘em “dog food,” but they considered that second rate. If you don’t feed them very often, they find nutritional supplements. Feign ignorance when the neighbor comes over wondering if you’ve seen his cat.)

When the wage spigot shuts off and the bills don’t get paid, every expense must be critically examined. Pets are no exception.

For example, never take an animal to the veterinarian. She’ll cost more than a pediatrician unless you have “pet medicare.” If your pet is sick or hurt, one of two things will happen: it will get better, or it will get worse and die. “Vets” only speed up the process. Give a dollar to a homeless army Vet on the street instead.

A hewjassillion dollars are wasted on pets, by people who wouldn’t give a nickel to help the homeless. My Aunt Girth could not bear to lose little Goopy-Eyes, so she kept it alive at all costs. Its miserable oozing eyes pleaded for mercy...”For Dog’s sake, man, drugs, a bullet, anything, just end this torture!” (Homeless people deserve nothing, of course. All the poor are that way on purpose; low wages, no wages, overpriced housing, dysfunctional schools, no health care, and depression because no one gives a damn, is their own fault. You see them in the margins of the cities, dying eyes pleading, “...drugs..a bullet...anything?”)

If your sick pet gets sicker, don’t pay to have it “put to sleep.” Weapon Enthusiasts will happily do this for free, and include a burial plot in their garden, a “burn barrel” for cremation, or an unwatched dumpster. (A similar program is in place for humans, called free market capitalism. They thoughtfully put themselves “to sleep” during sub-zero nights, because they are too sick or insane to walk several hundred miles to a warmer place with nothing.)

Pet “grooming” is another waste of grocery money. Your animal will be fine with the hair Dog gave it. Tie it in the back of your truck while you go through the car wash, if you are rich enough to own a clean truck. Take it for a walk in a rainstorm if not. Money spent to wash animals or vehicles is a complete waste, they just get dirty again.

As the way-too-rich squeeze the last few cents out of us at the bottom (the whimsical “flood-up” economic theory,) your pet may become “just another mouth to feed.” When human food prices go up, so do animal food prices. At some point, when everything’s been repossessed, (including your soul,) hard decisions must be made. Put the kids up for adoption? Or “get rid of” the pet?

No time to be squeamish. We may have a dual solution to unwanted pets, and world hunger. Humane Societies must evolve into a sort of Meat Brokerage. If you have never eaten dog or cat or hamster, it may be that you simply never got hungry enough. You happily eat cow, pig, and bird, so what’s the difference? Plenty of cultures eat every kind of meat, rats, bugs, lizards, anything. Extreme unrelenting hunger makes everything taste good. Interestingly, you don’t see many overweight people on the bug/rat/lizard diet.

If you have to get rid of the dog because you have nothing to eat, what would be more fitting than having ol’ Goopy for supper? You may have to get that Weapon Enthusiast to help, since most United Statesians no longer know how to convert a breathing creature into tidy cuts of delicious meat. If ol’ Goopy understood what was happening, she would be delighted to perform one last sacrifice for Master.

Most humans don’t think much about how to behave, they just do what everyone else is doing. The sensible idea of eating unwanted pets instead of wasting them would eventually catch on, just another topic for TV hosts to angrily and irrationally argue. Folks could exchange dog and cat (and horse!) recipes, and cooking shows would have a new genre.

Society’s morals would still be intact. Once a week, there could be a “Barbecue for the Homeless” at the animal shelter. Cold starving humans would be glad to snack on pampered animals who, even in their final days, got a warm room and a daily bowl of cereal. Afterwards, a drawing could be held for the privilege of spending a warm night in one of the empty kennels! What a humane society!