If you’re too poor to properly take care of a pet then I think for the sake of the pet it would be better not to get one. But some pets are pretty cheap. Mice are cheap and lovely buggers
Same goes for budgies and guinea pigs, equally lovely buggers
Budgies are wonderful and you can get them really cheap at rescue centers, but I probably spent at least $200/year on my little friend every year til he died. Well worth it to keep him healthy and try to give him a good life.
CW pet death and the cost of it
Also do plan ahead for what happens if you have to have a pet put down. I got a bird from someone who was taking very bad care of him, but I didn’t realize how bad of care until a few days later he was visibly ill and needed to go to the ER, where they diagnosed him with renal failure from long term heavy metal poisoning from… The water? Or eating paint chips? We were looking at $3000 (which I did not have) to keep him on life support and do some treatment, see if he could recover, but his quality of life would be shit after, or idk how much to euthanize him. Vet recommended euthanasia as the only humane option. All total this bird cost me $800 in the 3 or 4 days I knew him, plus the grief.
RIP lil dude, you deserved better
Absolutely, and I think compared to what a dog will cost you in the same amount of time, it’s still comparably cheap.
Concerning your CW
It is beyond me how anyone could neglect an animal like this, but I appreciate how much you tried to take care of the little one despite the short time you had with him. As soon as it comes to specialized treatment for heavy metal poisoning and the likes, it become so ridiculously expensive. I’m sorry you had to watch him suffer, that’s just heartbreaking.
Rodents require vet care like any other animal, and because of their relatively short lifespans, the vet expenses per year of life may be greater than that for cats or dogs.
I say “may”, because there are many modern, expensive treatments available for cats and dogs (like chemotherapy) which are not available for rodents, so the expense comparison is variable and complicated.
Where I live mice aren’t really taken to vet and especially put under a knife or something like that. They’re so small with weak hearts, combined with their short lifespan that it’s not worth it for the mice to do that. Especially something like surgery is just horrible for the mouse for very little care. And most common way to go is to get a cancer lump and there’s not much to do about that than take them to be put down.
So the expenses there aren’t big. You get most meds you’d need from apothecary or from people raising the mice (don’t buy mice from pet stores) and they also put them down when they get cancer or otherwise sick in a way that requires it.
They’re low cost buggers but their short lifespan does break my heart often.
Maybe it’s different for mice or in your country, but I’ve lived in several rural and urban areas in the US and was able to find an exotic vet for my rats (or a general vet willing to treat exotics) within an hour’s drive of each location, albeit after significant searching. I’ve also had a mass surgically removed from one of my older rats and he went on to have another year of quality life.
Edit: Euthanasia is important too. Mice and rats are prone to respiratory failure, which is a slow and agonizing way to go. I watched one of my rats die from pneumonia inside my oxygen chamber just two hours ago, and it was horrifying. I deeply regret not making the 90-minute drive to the emergency vet for a euthanasia last night, as I have done many times before. It usually costs me about $150-200 these days.
Rats are different to mice in that respect. They’re bigger and live longer so it makes sense to treat them. Mice are so tiny, pretty delicate and live for a fairly short time so from the perspective of giving the animal best possible life it doesn’t (in our opinion) make that much sense.
Not many vets are familiar with mice, there are those that are but it’s just often not thought of as good for the animal to necessary start intensive treatments or especially do surgery. Usually the issue is cancer anyway and surgery for that just puts the small bugger in stress and pain for very little gain.
They’re low cost buggers but their short lifespan does break my heart often.
that’s me with possums they’re so cute but they only live like 2 years :'(
Anyone can take care of a tarantula
Ehhhhh I’m not exactly vegan myself, but I do agree that if you can’t provide for a pet’s material needs, you probably shouldn’t have one? This includes space and time for walkies if it’s a dog — a lot of people have dogs who shouldn’t.
I think the post’s intention is ambiguous, it does just say “if you’re poor, you should not own pets”. It’s not clear if they just think all non-rich people shouldn’t have pets, or if they’re actually referring to an owner’s ability to provide for material needs.
Yeah we should likely be reading the slop as ‘non-rich people should focus on saving their money to be rich instead of caring for an animal with their money which they do have’. It’s the conservative argument usually made.
rage bait from no-names belongs in slop or gossip or whatever the fuck it’s called
Just gunna’ dump this here because it’s a good reminder to people about the facts of animal ownership.
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/08/22/Do-Pets-Make-Lives-Better/
But even though the belief that pets bring many benefits to their owners is widespread, research shows that having a pet is not a panacea for bolstering human psychological well-being.
Despite this, pets are often portrayed in the news and on social media as effective solutions to reduce stress and loneliness, reflecting a popular belief in their health benefits.
This can lead people to adopt pets without fully considering the responsibilities and demands involved, which can have negative consequences for both themselves and their pets.
Very interesting, thank you.
So I love having pets, I’ve had them my entire life. All kinds. But I never really felt less alone for having them? Like they’re great and everything but I’ve never had that feeling of, “oh well I don’t have any friends but at least I have an animal”. Its just different box for me. I assumed I was the odd one out, and maybe that was because I don’t care much for dogs, maybe because I’m ND, but its interesting to know it doesn’t actually fill that gap for a lot of other people either.
im torn on this discussion personally. i adopted a young dog from someone who could no longer keep her. a year later my dog isnt eating or wanting to do anything so i took her to the vet. turns out she had bad stomach cancer. this put me in the position where i had to either have her put down because surgery would be thousands of dollars i don’t have or i keep her alive while she suffers and her health deteriorates and life becomes unbearable for her til the cancer kills her
i loved that dog but for her sake i do wonder if she would have been better off had someone with money came along and taken her
i do wonder if she would have been better off had someone with money came along and taken her
Well yeah, of course she would have been better off. But that also most likely wasn’t going to happen. Rich assholes buy designer dogs for thousands of dollars from breeders, they don’t sully their hands with poor dogs from poor people. Most of the time if you’re poor and have a dog, that dog’s only alternatives are an overcrowded and underfunded shelter or the literal streets. She certainly wouldn’t have been any better off there.
Cancer is often a losing battle even with all the money in the world. Animals can’t really tell you something is wrong and tend to hide illnesses, so detection is frequently late stage.
i loved that dog but for her sake i do wonder if she would have been better off had someone with money came along and taken her
I don’t think this is a healthy way to think about your dog’s misfortune. There’s no way “having the resources to pay for possible future cancer treatment” is a reasonable prerequisite for taking on responsibility for a dog. You minimised her suffering and that is sufficient. You rescued her and you didn’t let selfish irrationality stop you from making a hard choice that she needed you to make.
You were the one who stepped up for her, twice. Not some hypothetical person with more resources.
I’m sorry for your loss. It’s gut wrenching.
Hot take: maybe everyone/every household should be able to afford a pet or two
Hotter take: nobody should have pets. We can never truly provide enough care to warrant their unquestioning trust and love.
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I don’t think this is the take. You’re essentially saying that we should undo eugenics by doing more eugenics.
My take is that humanity, through its past actions, now has a responsibility to care for the species that it curated to live alongside itself. Cats dogs cows chickens pigs all that shit. We can and should move towards a society that doesn’t eat or abuse these animals, but they are fully evolved for living within and alongside humans in their day to day lives and we shouldn’t just let them go extinct any more than we should just let any other species go extinct, and the best way to provide for them an environment for them to flourish in is to continue letting them live alongside us in our day to day lives.
keeping species from going extinct is important because humanity destroying biodiversity and doing irreparable damage to the biosphere is bad. what is the point to keeping purpose-bred subspecies from going extinct? they can’t be released into the wild, because that will cause more damage (see what rats, dogs and pigs have done when introduced by humans to new environments for example). why should we keep breeding dairy cows and chickens after their respective industries have been abolished? infinite animal sanctuaries for eternity? chickens that mature in an unhealthily short time and destroy their own bodies to produce eggs must be bred forever?
infinite animal sanctuaries for eternity
That’s pretty much my idea. Let them back into the cycle of natural selection, they’ll breed out unhealthy genes they are currently saddled with naturally and find a new equilibrium with the environment they are in.
by animal sanctuaries i didn’t mean wildlife refuges, but farm animal sanctuaries as they exist now: big farmland type spaces where animals rescued from the animal industries can live their lives freely with help from humans.
by the way, most animals that are exploited for food still exist in their wild species form: jungle fowl (chickens), ibex (goat), wild boar (pig), mouflon (sheep) and they are suited for the environments they live in. (the big exception is aurochs (cattle) which is extinct) i prefer protecting these, instead of trying to rewild the subspecies that have been bred to produce as much food for humans as possible
Well what I have in mind is more along the lines of a wildlife refuge. Perhaps a middle industry would need to be created, something to “rehabilitate” livestock animals back into living in the wild, but we’re describing the challenges of such an endeavor, not the reason why it shouldn’t be undertaken.
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Why exactly do you think it is so critical for us to perpetuate the existence of these animals?
I said it in my other answer but it’s because I view them as equally valid forms of life as any other. Also paraphrasing my other answer: what you’re describing are challenges to be overcome, not reasons why the task shouldn’t be undertaken. Perhaps some problems must be bred out intentionally before an animal can be released, perhaps the animal sanctuaries for feral populations would have to be protected from predators in some way, I’m not advocating for dumping the mass of them in the woods and seeing what happens, I’m advocating for taking responsibility, and I view killing them all off as soon as they’ve outgrown their usefulness as an abandonment of that responsibility. As for resources - you opened this thread by describing an entirely vegan world, so I don’t exactly feel burdened in this hypothetical by what is feasible from where I’m standing within the society I currently inhabit.
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I struggle to find the concept of eugenics categorically applicable to this case.
I’m not sure what’s confusing about it. A species represents a line of genetics, and you clearly see yourself as a moral authority on what genetics do and don’t get to continue to reproduce themselves. For the record, I don’t necessarily disagree with this on principle - negative genetic traits that cause pain in animals can and should be bred out of them - I just believe that the type of eugenics you are invoking is a morally unjustifiable type.
what really is the material reason for keeping in existence animals who have been selectively bred solely for selfish human means?
There is no “material” reason. It should be done because it is the right thing to do. If you want a moral justification, I would say that life is valuable in all of its forms, and that domesticated animals represent just as valid of a form of life as wild ones. Their existence makes the world a better place and extinguishing them would be morally reprehensible no matter how nice you are about it or how slowly you do it, so establishing a new paradigm where they continue to exist in a way that balances environmental costs and ethical concerns is better than the alternative of sterilizing them and letting them all die out.
I believe that you have succumbed to a kind of “animal ownership realism”, where you can only imagine animals living alongside humans through the lens of exploitation that they are currently subject to. What I would advocate is an advancement of humanity’s relationship with its domesticated animals to a kind of non-exploitative symbiosis. Dogs cannot live in the wild, and that’s okay. Cats are specialized to live in human domiciles, and that’s okay. There is no reason to assume that we cannot still share companionship with dogs or live alongside cats or any of the hundreds of other human-pet relationships in a future that has abolished all forms of exploitation, human or otherwise.
Wait this is a rerun of outdoor cats, like it has the same points
Much like 2016, some things never end
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Please read my full comment before replying. I specifically said:
For the record, I don’t necessarily disagree with this on principle
by which I was referring to applying eugenics to animals. I simply draw a distinction between getting rid of genetic diseases and committing genocide.
the abolitionist position is to selflessly care for these animals until they are fazed out
And what does “fazed out” entail? I can see that you care for individual animal lives, but I view letting the species die out as morally equivalent to killing them, while it seems that you attach no moral weight to the existence of the species itself at all. Which is fine, but if you’re going to argue that species in themselves don’t have a right to exist then argue that point, don’t dance around it like you’re currently doing.
Letting a genetic line fade by refusing forcible breeding
This is a shift of the goalposts. Earlier you specifically mentioned mass sterilization to prevent feral animals from continuing to breed, justifying it by the bad conditions they live in rather than advocating for an improvement of those conditions.
at the complete cost of their autonomy
This is what I mean when I said you have succumbed to “animal ownership realism.” It’s a deliberate invocation of the phrase “capitalist realism”, which refers to the tendency of people under capitalism to have difficulty imagining non-capitalist systems. You are having difficulty imagining a paradigm where animals simultaneously have autonomy and are cared for by the people they live around/with. I want to imagine it is possible to have a world where animals live with humans not as property.
So animals cannot consent to being in a safe environment where they literally live longer, receive healthy diets and medical care, and form loving bonds with people, but sterilizing them is fine?
I’m gonna be honest there are about 3,000,000 steps towards leftism that need to be taken before this can even remotely be considered a hill to die on which I am sure you would be more than glad to filter and purge leftists by
I am vegan. I have been a vegan for over a quarter of a century now. I also have a cat. There was of course breeding of his ancestors for exploitational purposes, but there was also co-evolution that benefited both species. Regardless, my relationship with him is not one based on exploitation but on genuine mutual companionship. Our relationship is mutually beneficial on a number of levels. I am confident in saying that I not only allow him to live an enjoyable, self-actualized cat life, but that I also at times bring him joy. And he certainly brings me joy. I respect him as an individual being with his own wants and desires and do my best to fulfill them. I know of plenty of other humans who have similarly mutually beneficial relationships with their nonhuman companions. This is not welfarism and it is no more exploitational than many human relationships where a power imbalance exists by necessity but is still one based on mutual caring. I think the welfarism argument also completely ignores the reality of co-evolution (as seen between many other species that don’t involve humans at all). Humans and nonhuman domesticated companions can and frequently do exist in non exploitational harmony. There is no reason this should be at odds with veganism and no reason we need to move towards phasing out the domestic cat (or dogs, etc.) as a species in order to be morally, ethically, or ideologically consistent as vegans.
And for the record, I am not against phasing out certain species (allowing them to go extinct by not giving them the opportunity to breed while providing and caring for the individuals during the time they’re still around) for those species that exist wholly for human exploitation. I am not opposed to the extinction of, for example, cattle on some anti-extinction principle. I just fundamentally disagree with the position that domesticated animals can’t coexist with humans in a mutually loving and compassionate symbiosis, since clearly they can.
cats might have domesticated themselves
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the cat can’t consent to going outside either.
No don’t cross the streams
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I actually have not read much vegan theory on pets. Any recommendations?
Its not so bad actually. There are times when I really miss my pets, but I do just fine going outside and watching wild animals from a distance. There are reasons that I don’t have pets ; the money aspect is a big one, and so is the energy needed to do it. I would need help.
I think that having a family or community to fall back on for their care is important.
This. I really miss my cat and due to finances I’m forced to be alone. The saying “you will own nothing and be happy” rings true.
That’s really got to be one of the saddest things among many sad things about not having money in this world, I’d cry so much if I had to get rid of my cats for financial reasons, I’m sorry
If you’re poor, I personally get to decide what you spend your money on
Being an animal must suck, because regardless of what a human being thinks about you, they all agree you’re incapable of deciding for yourself and your fate is ultimately left up to Humans.
It’d probably be best for everyone if we could just leave this planet, but we’re stuck here. Shame
13·1 month agoEven if there was some other place to go. Wouldnt it just be going to fuck up some other planet?
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
nobody cares if we fuck up a bunch of rocks and dust on a world that had no life before we landed on it.
Yeah but you just know some people would bring along sentient creatures for food
It’s possible. I just choose not to believe there isn’t an option to have a world where life co-exist in mutually beneficial ways. I just don’t have an answer for how to deal with life, that we’ve determined, is incapable of full self-determination. So my solution there would be to leave them be, to not interfere, and go live in like a death star in space, but like a communist death star. A life star? no that sounds lame I need a better name.
Sounds kinda like inverted anprim-ism, lol
I guess lol It wouldn’t surprise me if someone had thought of something like it before, but idk what it’s called.
At the end of the day it’s just Utopianism what I was saying. It doesn’t serve any purpose, other than making me feel like a better world is possible. Sometimes I question myself if I’m sharing my thoughts too much, because there’s way more accomplished people who others should listen to, if I’m being a nuisance someone should let me know. I promise it’s not intentional.
Same assholes later ‘why aren’t the poor having kids’.
My aunt recently adopted a dog and the amount of time it took, paperwork, finance and background checks etc was ridiculous, then they almost turned her away for being too old until she put down my cousin as a reference. This wasn’t for a puppy nor anything fancy, just a plain old dog.
When I lived in a more populous area I really miss having access to affordable vet students I knew from college, like sneak around campus at 5am set your cat’s broken leg for 40 dollars tier and being able to ask for advice on caring for my pets without a formal visit. I also miss being able to get vaccines otc and using my lab experience to diy, while out here they’re big on non-human animals getting autism and everything’s way more gated ironically. I’m glad there’s still vet places you can order basic things online for wound care but geeze, it shouldn’t be like this, you shouldn’t have to
up some reference vet textbooks and have animal handling experience to have some kind of limited access to affordable pet care.I suppose there’s a lot of truth to receiving better care when younger leads to better outcomes later, my cats are older now, 13 and 15, the later my old calico swiped from somewhere, the other was a kitten my mom found with some others that she figured were abandoned.
shelters aren’t going to let you adopt if you’re destitute anyway.
Cw: animal abuse.
I mean. My parents have never had a good track record with dogs. They only ever took them to the vets for vaccinations, and never had gotten a dog put down humanely. When it was time for them to go, they couldnt even pull the trigger themselves, and had to get a friend to do it and dig the hole.
Even now, one of their dogs is on his last legs, and, quite frankly, should be put down. Even though he’s living life and seems happy, he’s skin and bones because pancreatitis, lymes’ disease (which me and my girlfriend paid for the doctors visit and guilted my parents to bring him to the vet) missing an eye due to getting owned by a deer, and a puppyhood leg weakness from jumping out of a car, as well as normal artheritis.
All this because they never had the money (or were unwilling to spend) the money on a pet. I can see the argument.
I support free healthcare for pets, it’s both socialist and pro-science position.
the uk has the pdsa which is a charity that does basically that for us poors
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I’m really curious what you mean by this.
