I think that with animals that are domesticated, especially cats and dogs, who have been trained and used by us for thousands of years (and became pets after they became useful to us in other ways), we do have an obligation to house and feed, since in a very real way, humans ‘created’ the versions of the animal (that is, domesticated) that they are now. I am opposed to breeding animals to become pets, because to me, that is the same as ‘using’ them for the way that they look, or for certain behavioral traits. Plus it’s just shameful that you’d pay to produce a dog when there are so many that would just about kill themselves for a good home.

Also, I have personal experience with dogs and cats since I was a kid, and maybe this is just because I’m hopelessly anthropocentric, but I think my cats and my dog really do love me, and not just because I feed them. (Disclaimer: there is a very warm and fuzzy grey cat in my lap licking my arm as I write this!)

I am also oppsed to ‘exotic’ pets, since I see that they are ‘used’ in the same way that bred animals are. They don’t belong in a cage in your house, or even freely able to run around, they belong in their natural habitat. So when Paris Hilton gets bitten by her kinkajou, I think that she deserves it!

But I also think there is an idea put forth by Michael Pollan in Botany of Desire…he writes about plants, but I think the idea has possible context for animals too. His theory is that while we are busy ‘using’ an animal, they are just as much ‘using’ us, that it is all an evolutionary two-way street. My cat gives me warmth, purring, kisses, (and often a diva-sized attitude) and I give her really good food, a warm and dry home, treats, and health care. Not a bad deal for the cat, and in the past, that connection with human beings meant their offspring would be more likely to survive. Now cats are SO successful that wherever you go, there are too many of them! An evolutionary success.

While it is a fascinating discussion, I feel your use of antiquated philosophers who are stymied by the limited constructs of codified “logos” and reason, fails to grasp important pitfalls of such structuralized thought. The presumption, by logicians and the like, is that meaning is necessarily fixed and dogmatic. This philosopical premise, following post-structuralism and postmodernism, is no longer tenable or “reasonable.”

Read some Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Barthes, and Rorty.

Regardless of all the intellectual banter, my feelings regarding the topic are complex. I envy your simplicity, much as I am grateful to be who I am and see the issue in a different way. Inevitably, regardless of how I may anthrophomorphize animals, there is always necessarily the human construct being placed on the animal world in order to understand or explain.

That being said, to see an animal, shaking in a cage, being injected with needles, being pinned down by all fours, clearly frightened and suffering, is a visceral experience and one that leaves an impact. The experience of being an animal is not one that can be contained by human constructs, only in so far as we are using those constructs to justify our own utilitarian use of animals. Inevitably, humans “use” thousands of living organisms for their survival, from a carrot to a cow hide. For some, paying homage to whatever living being they are “using” is enough. For others, doing everything possible to avoid that death is crucial.

From a ‘human’ perspective, it is a topic that goes beyond the old rationalization of “well gee, that monkey can’t make moral judgments anyway so…..”