The domestication of cats and dogs is sometimes an utter failure

Globally domestication of cats and dogs is a failure….By “globally” I mean that taken as a whole when you incorporate into an assessment the domestication of cats and dogs in all the countries of the world you have to be drawn to the conclusion that humans have failed.

I am becoming more and more pessimistic about the domestication of cats and dogs. It was not meant to be like this. It was not meant to be that stray dogs in Bali are brutally killed in the most horrific manner, cut up and then cooked and presented to tourists as chicken. Yes, tourists in Bali are eating chicken kebabs or they think they are. These were all stray domestic dogs. They should be cared for by a person. They should be the companion of a person. But because there are too many of them due to a relentlessly irresponsible section of the dog owning public in that country there is obviously unregulated breeding which leads to unwanted animals which leads to the idea that they can be harvested like livestock but the at least livestock is killed under laws and regulations. These dogs are simply slaughtered in the most horrendous manner and are part of a fraud perpetrated against well-meaning tourists.

And then cats suffer the same sort of horrendous behaviour in parts of China. For the same reasons. There are too many cats wandering around China which are picked up by unscrupulous traders who cram them into lorries drive them down to the south where they are bought by restaurant owners who kill them in an equally brutal manner before feeding them to the public as a delicatessen which is said to improve human health and beat arthritis and any other ailment that you might have.

These are examples of the failure of the domestication of cats and dogs. And they are terrible examples. This brutal animal abuse which is not illegal would not have happened if every cat and dog owner was of the requisite standard and acted in a responsible manner to ensure that their cat or dog was spayed or neutered and cared for. It’s just another total failure of the human who is I am afraid very adept at failure when it comes to the domestication of animals.

Bali and China are in the Far East. They have a particular relationship with animals which is totally alien to me but if we turn our eyes to Europe and the Americas there are still many unwanted cats and dogs, many of whom are unnecessarily killed by humans and its legal. They come into the world because of the irresponsible attitude of some people and then they depart the world not that long afterwards because of the failure of people.

This is the result of domestication which has gone wrong in my view. We have to admit it. Domestication was not meant to be like this. The standard of cat and dog ownership has improved but we do not place a high priority on it because we do not place a high enough priority on animal welfare in the world, not even in the West. There are less and less unwanted cats and dogs in America as the years go by but there are still far far too many. Progress is far too slow.

I think we have to look again at domestication of cats and dogs and re-evaluated and decide whether we want to proceed. To me, taken globally, it is barely viable. Yes, there are many millions of decent cat caretakers/guardians so one should not criticise them or take away the pleasure of having a companion animal from them but the standard overall taken globally is not high enough. There’s too much failure and it is always the animal who suffers. Lots of unwanted domestic animals lead the human into abusing animals because we then devalue that animal in our eyes. We must start valuing animals to the same standard that we value ourselves and other people. Politicians must start prioritising animal welfare and improving the standard of cat and dog ownership and that can only be done through legislation I am afraid. A lot of people don’t like the idea of legislating for high standards in cat and dog ownership but I see no alternative. It is time for change.

However, we have to admit that even legislation might not work because the problem has become so deeply entrenched and extensive that it may be impossible to change the course of the domestication of cats and dogs. It is probable that it would be impractical to enforce laws governing cat and dog ownership.

When I see stories like the Bali story which I referred to at the beginning of this article, I cringe. I am unable to read the story because it is simply too grisly and upsetting but I get the message loud and clear: utter failure and the people engaged in this animal abuse should be completely ashamed of themselves but they are not. They see nothing wrong in it which shows a void in respect of education, sensibility, awareness, enlightenment in the 21st-century which is unacceptable.

And then we have the endless stories coming out of Australia of the arrangements by the authorities in that country to slaughter en masse as many feral cats as they can by any means that they can devise. They’re doing this to protect their native species. These feral cats would not exist but for irresponsible cat ownership when domestic cats were brought to the continent many years ago. I hate to see the legal mass slaughter of cats but I also hate to see the failure of the domestication of cat which is the root cause of the desire to kill millions of feral cats and not in an humane manner.

In the US, how many tens of thousands of hours have been expended in discussing within council chambers how lawmakers can solve the feral cat problem? A product of the failure of the domestication of cats.

Don’t go to bloody Bali until they stop this disgusting behaviour.