On "Pets in America: A History" by Katherine C. Grier

To be perfectly honest, I found this book boring and tedious, and even though there were some interesting little tidbits, I think the whole book could have been written in 100 pages rather than 300. Maybe it's because I never find anything too "Victorian" to be all that interesting, or maybe it was just because the descriptions of things were so repetitive and vague "some animals were pets, and some were food. People loved their pets." BAH. I feel like the book lacked teeth -- it didn't seem to sink into anything very deeply, didn't address the real controversies of what she was saying, and included numerous, in my opinion, somewhat pointless, ill-contextualized anecdotes from a seemingly random assortment of famous people (Harriet Beecher Stowe and all her relatives, Mark Twain, and someone with the name Renessaeler, which I'm assuming has something to do with the poltechnic institute.) It was never clear just how representative the anecdotes were intended to be, or why we should care about them when trying to gain a real understanding of the role pets have played in history. I'm sure I would have stopped reading it if it weren't assigned for my animals seminar. As it stands, Jane only asked us to read a few chapters to "focus" our reading, so I have managed to avoid reading the whole book. But what follows are some notes and thoughts anyway.

On page 5, she mentions a book that I probably would think was interesting, something called "Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets" by Yi Fu Tuan, which talks about the "desire to control and reshape the natural world."

9 She introduces the origin of the word "pet" . . . saying it was used interchangeably with "favorite" which makes a lot of sense I guess.

Defining "pet" is not nearly as interesting in this text as I think it could be. I am reminded of Erica Fudge's question of whether or not a pet is really an animal, which seems much more worthy of probing, since deciding a pet is something exceptional, that they are removed from the category of other animals, makes more sense of why our behaviors towards them are so contradictory to other animals. It also made me think about Koko and her pets, and the various kinds of interspecies pets that we have identified. What are other examples of this behavior, and how is it different from human practice of pet-keeping, and does any kind of interspecies care take place in the wild that at all parallels pet-keeping? A related question emerged later in the book when I was thinking about this idea that pet-keeping teaches children to be gentle and kind to other living things, and how parents often try and show babies how to kindly treat the animal. Does this kind of instruction appear within other animal communities? Like, does a mother bonobo correct her baby if it is being rough with a kitten? I am assuming there would be precious little opportunity for this in the wild, but in a captive setting, do we see similar behavior as human parents? Is empathy or kindness taught to baby primates?

I can't help but read this book in the context of the previous book we read, Foer's "Eating Animals." I think to myself as I read it that the idea of companionship is a much more flattering view of our relationship to animals than the relationship Foer describes in slaughter houses. Pet-keeping, especially in this book, emerges as an incredible kind of vanity, choosing to depict ourselves as kind, compassionate, sacrificing towards helpless animals. I suppose part of why I felt so hostile to this book is that it barely mentions this kind of duplicity (thought, to its credit, it does occasionally talk about the contradictions between other farm animals and the favorites). I am perhaps more angry with the audience, and myself, for taking such self-satisfaction in caring for animals well, in giving them a humane death, in treating their illnesses, and truly loving them, and then persisting in self-imposed ignorance about other ways that animals are treated.

It seems to me that pets serve as an antidote, not only to our forms of cruelty toward other animals, but also as one against our general cruelty or lack of compassion towards other humans. They seem like a buffer to me, a relationship in which we can enact the kind of persons we'd ideally like to be -- kind, compassionate, caring, loving, forgiving, and also in control. These are not things we find ourselves good at on a large scale, and certainly much of our interactions feel beyond our control.

I have the suspicion that, if not always historically, then at least now, our ability to care for, love, pet, show affection to pet animals is some kind of buffer for us. a way to live out kindness toward something, to prove our ability to love and be compassionate, against the uncomfortable knowledge of our compliance in animal testing, meat-eating, and even wars fought in our name. I was at first thinking of how awful this bald contradiction between pet ownership and say meat-eating is, which has been brought up many times before, but from this perspective I suddenly think that maybe this very contradiction in necessary -- its a way to imagine ourselves, for a moment, in a flattering light. to know that we will get up at 5:30 to take the dog out in the snow. To know that we will cry, sob, be lonely and sad when our pet dies is to remind us that we are capable of caring about things. And to be able to touch a pet, to provide ti a comforting, loving touch, fills a deep need that we hardly ever reach with anyone else, a way to show at least SOME animal the kind of compassion we would really prefer to show to all of them. When watching that PETA video, I wanted so desperately . . . my overwhelming urge wasn't specifically to stop the torture, I had no plan for how the pain would be ended, but my immediate reaction was to reach out and touch the cow's face or put my hand on the pig . . . a great desire to touch them and say "it's ok. it will be ok." which is fruitless and silly. but it seems like touch is the place where our non-lingual communication can happen, our only window into telling them something . . . and since there is no access to any of these other animals, i feel like, even more than before, i want to touch the animals I do have access to . . .to transfer my impotent (better word?) touch of kindness to another animal, and replacement.

So, to me, pets seem to occupy a really interesting role that barely gets mentioned in the text.

She has a section called "why pets matter" . . . and I don't think I need convincing, but she does say a few things that I think are good supporting points, including (12) that they are "profoundly voiceless" and that "Social historians have been concerned with recovering the stories of the 'voiceless' members of our society for decades"

I like the way she describes dealing with our contradictions with regard to animals -- "children seem to have absorbed the dissonances with little trouble" (20)

22 - she suggests that the reason people are so uncomfortable with the idea of large dog-breeders or puppy mills is in part because dogs are not supposed to be treated like livestock . . . another intersection with Foer's "let's eat dogs" manifesto thing at the beginning.

This idea that pets are not 'useful' in the strictest sense, especially now (cats and dogs in the past certainly had more of a household function than today) is really interesting as well, since it offers the opportunity to think of relationships with animals not strictly dependent on our benefit I mean, we certainly benefit in terms of pleasure or enjoyment, but our use of the animal does not leave them spent up, like the use of a cow for meat does. They are not diminished by our enjoyment (arguably) . . . . and again, I think proving to ourselves that we can have this kind of relationship with animals is psychologically important to counteracting the deeply selfish motives for our use of other animals. Possibly. And also, I think there is a strange parallel between art, which also isn't strictly utilitarian in any way, and pets.

47 "Dogs are unusually malleable genetically." Is this true? I mean, it does certainly seem this way since there are not 400 breeds of cats, nor are there hamsters 6 times larger than other hamsters. . . but that makes me want to know why. or how. What does it mean, physiologically, to be genetically malleable?

50 - Guinea pigs were apparently "first displayed with the swine; they were later moved to the poultry department." at the Concord town cattle show.

On white mice and rats: "While mice and rats were pursued relentlessly by conscientious housewives as vermin (the ambulatory equivalent of dirt), some children raised white mice and rats. Their whiteness, a recessive genetic trait that could be selected, suggested that the creatures were fundamentally different from their wild cousins." (51) Not to mention that whiteness is OK but brown or blackness is somehow not ok. . . racist.

Apparently, deer were kept by the wealthy as "living lawn ornaments" in "deer parks" in the early 1800's. (55) How lovely!

Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain) apparently was given the duty of naming all his family's many, many pets because he was so good at it, and they had a black cat named Satan. Which I love. (It had one kitten, named Sin). The more I hear about Mark Twain, the more he seems like a downright superbly enjoyable person. I guess he also let all the pets sleep in his bed with him while his wife was away. (104)

One neat thing about this book is that it offers lists of pretty interesting pet names, like Azore, for a deer (55)

She talks about doctoring pets, and how there was no such thing as a small animal vet for a very long time, but with the loss of other urban animals (like horses) they slowly developed small animal practices (due to demand). . . but anyway, the point is that most people doctored their pets themselves, and usually using normal human remedies. On 114, and elsewhere, she points out that this is underlied? (not the right word) by the assumption that animal and human bodies are essentially the same. She takes this to mean that people had a commonsense understanding that animals could feel pain in the way humans do, and can be comforted the way humans do.

161 - From "Letters to Mothers" by Lydia H. Sigourney (1838)

If it [the infant] seizes a kitten by the back, or pulls its hair, show immediately by your own example, how it might be held properly, and soothed into confidence. Draw back the little hand, lifted to strike the dog. Perhaps it may not understand that it thus inflicts pain. But be strenuous in confirming an opposite habit. Do not permit it to kill flies, or to trouble harmless insects. Check the first buddings of those Domitian tastes. Instruct it that the gift of life, to the poor beetle, or the crawling worm, is from the Great Father above, and not to be lightly trodden out. A little boy, who early discovered propensities to cruelty, was so thoroughly weaned from them by his mother, that when attending to infantine lessons in Natural History, long before he was able to read, and hearing of a bird that was fond of catching flies, he lisped, with a kind of horror upon his baby-face, "Oh! Kill flies! will God forgive it?"

171 - Refers to the "Eden of Home" where life was supposed to be a "microcosm of heaven on earth" and that the evangelical Charlotte B. Tonna wrote that animals had "fallen alongside Adam and Eve. Thus restoration of kind relations between humans and animals was an important step toward rebuilding paradise." I love this idea, "Rebuilding Paradise" where we don't eat them or no one feels pain, and this strange effort to like . . remove all predatory behavior and everyone live together in the peaceable kingdom, but in your house. . . or the idea of a little Eden in your home, making a home interior decorated with plant life and abundant food and loving animals . . . (I'm thinking of a miniature house with these characteristics).

Further on this topic, on 172, she says that, while the outside world of commerce and competition was growing more cutthroat, "Domesticity gave the household new importance" as a "refuge from the world of economic competition" and "was amodel of the world as it should be, where physical and economic power was softened, or even supplanted, by moral influence and love." It's a little unclear as to what time period this is talking about, but I gather at the dawn of industrialization perhaps.

173 "Applying domestic values to pubic life meant kindly care for an enlarged 'household circle' of dependent beings who could not fend for themselves in the world: the insane, the worthy poor, the orphan, the aged, the penitent prostitute, the slave--and the animal." Again, this comparison or grouping of "animal" with all kinds of other "others" . . . . And then later (176) this: "The Christianization of human relationships of power over animals as strikingly like earlier attempts to Christianize slavery through an argument for stewardship and restraint on the part of masters to the benefit of their less-civilized human chattel. It also suffered from similar limitations as an argument, since both enslaved people and animal were defined fundamentally by their legal status and value as property rather than by their place in the human heart."

175 - There was an essay from 1867 (no author given) called "An Apology for Dogs" that argued that humans are to dogs as God is to humans, an analogy meant to help people understand stewardship. I like this idea, I like this title, and it makes me think of "about our failure to become god."

179 - Again and again, this idea that cruelty as a child toward animals will lead to cruelty and evil as an adult comes up --here she talks about how you want to bring up a boy that is a kind, sensitive, feeling sort of man. "The inverse, the man who did not feel, was to be feared." I love this phrase. The man who did not feel. That's true -- the man with no empathy, the sociopath, is the man to fear. But also this makes me think of fight club . . . how they perversely had to inflict pain in order to feel anything, and how I think the torture of some animals (and people) amounts to that. She talks about how cock fighting and dog fighting are things men and almost solely men participated in. Why? Where does that aggression come from and is it leaking out the sides, like the sub-terranean fight clubs, because the inbred desire to kill or hunt or whatever is being squelched in the rest of society? Or is that a poor excuse for violence?

210 - There is something called "Picture Lessons: Illustrating Moral Truth" which is "a set of large, colored pictures with didactic caption published by the American Sunday-School Union" which I think sounds like it's begging for me to make a series of these things. I like that they would be large color pictures. (There is an example which isn't all that visually compelling, but whatever. :) I think I should make some series called "picture lessons"

213 - Comparing animals to kids: she brings up that they have numerous physical characteristics that they share like crawling on all fours, inability to talk . . . I think it's interesting that it seems so hard to define animals alone, that they are always "like" something else . . .

She uses a quote about someone saying that having pets "really makes us human" which is just a fascinating thing to say . . . that animals actually MAKE us human, or we are defined by our opposition? Or that, to be human, is to be humane, and our one opportunity to enact that in daily life is with regard to animals? Or how blindly we must ignore the other ways in which our treatment of animals makes us seem more like monsters than "humane" (which is probably also more "human" that we are wanting to admit.)

228 - Talks more about how, even at the end of the 19th century, there was this association between adult violence and childhood maltreatment of animals. Quotes another author "statistics, carefully gathered from training-schools and prisons, that very rew men who in boyhood owned or care for a pet animal . . . are to be found among criminals."

Random reminder: Can I make stereographs? How hard are they to make? COULD I MAKE THEM OF THE PILES OF PIGS, as though they were being disposed of? I feel like one could make one easily by simply moving a camera a bit or something.

230 - quotes Olive Thorne Miller in 1894 in a book on animals as saying "The use of the pet as an aid to health has not been considered as it deserves. No instinct is truer than that of the unmarried woman of lonely life to surround herself with pets. The companionship of cats and birds in solitary lives has unquestionably kept more people than we suspect out of the insane asylum; and if friendless men took kindly to them, there would be fewer misers, drunkards, and criminals than there are now. It seems to be the divinely appointed mission of our furred and feathered friends, who never grow gloomy with care, never suffer from envy, ambition, or any of our soul-destroying vices, to make us forget our worries, to inspire us with hope, and thence with health."

As a way to "focus our reading" we left out several chapters, so let's skip to the epilogue.

She argues in the epilogue that one reason pets are so important, even today, is that we have a "desire to connect to goodness" which I agree with, and which sounds a little more generous of a way to describe what I was thinking when I first started reading the book.