Future generations will look back at our current relationship with animals and feel horrified.
We already look back with scorn at circuses that enslaved animals and forced them to perform cruel tricks. Surely, people will eventually look back on factory farms and slaughterhouses with the same disbelief?
But it’s not just the way we abuse animals: I think our relationship with pets will also seem puzzling one day.
I have no doubt people will feel that taking dogs around on leads and hitting them if they didn’t do what we want, keeping fish in tiny bowls, locking rabbits in cages and forcing birds to live in houses was not only cruel, but just plain weird.
For now, from what I’ve seen, every pet ‘owner’ agrees that some people shouldn’t have pets – and yet, every pet owner thinks they aren’t one of those people.
While it’s often easy, though, to judge how other people treat their pets, some people make it easier than others.
Katie Price has announced that she’s acquired another pet: A Sphynx kitten called Daisy.
This would be fine – were it not for the fact that it comes mere weeks after she announced that her last cat had to be put down just months after bringing him home and after a string of other tragedies involving her animals.
Her daughter Princess’s dog, Rolo, suffocated after reportedly getting trapped in an electric armchair.
‘The breeder we had bought the dog from had given us CBD oil to give this dog and I don’t know if Princess had given it too much or what, but we knew it would sleep a lot’, wrote Price in her memoir. ‘That day it had gone under the reclining chair to sleep and no-one had realised and it had been crushed.’
In 2017, one of her horses was killed by a car on the A24 after escaping from its field. The following year she was ‘devastated’ after her German Shepherd, Queenie, was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
That same year, her pet chameleon Marvin died. Price allegedly said he died of ‘a broken heart’ after her son, Junior, moved in with his dad – but The Sun quoted an insider as saying: ‘With all of her money troubles Katie has been unable to heat her mansion, and chameleons need to be warm at all times’.
If you’re quick to criticise Price, remember: It’s not just her
In 2019, she bought her daughter Princess a pet hedgehog, Peggy – before losing Peggy for two weeks. She allegedly gave away an Alsatian named Bear within six months of acquiring him after he had three near death experiences in a few weeks, including running onto a busy dual carriageway.
Price’s third Alsatian, Sparkle, died in 2020. She shared the news on Instagram, saying: ‘Hey guys, really f***ed off this morning. I’ve just woken up to realise that one of my dogs has been killed on the road.’
In 2022, her dog Sharon was killed when, allegedly, she escaped, ran onto the road and was hit by a car. A source close to Katie told The Sun this was ‘rotten luck’. Then last year, Price’s dog Blade was also struck by a car near her home.
She has four chihuahuas and stuffed one of them down her jacket in order to take him horse riding. She temporarily lost one of the others while on holiday in Dorset.
PETA has said that Price treats animals like ‘disposable toys’ and that she has a ‘hideous track record of animal deaths’.
It’s difficult to argue with that, but I don’t want to single out Price – a woman who has suffered childhood sexual abuse, rape at gunpoint, a miscarriage, cancer, bankruptcies and a barrage of online abuse.
The simple truth is that a lot of people just shouldn’t get pets – because they’re not equipped to look after animals.
If parents are having trouble with their children, the state can theoretically step in and help; but there aren’t the same routes if someone’s pet is troublesome, or if they can’t work out what to do.
When her daughter’s dog Rolo died, Price referred to him as ‘it’. What does that tell us?
But again, the language that many people use about pets is revealing; it’s not just Price.
We talk about ‘owning’ cats or dogs; when they go missing, we say they ‘escaped’.
Doesn’t that say a lot?
And everyone says they love their pet but the experiences of those who have witnessed many dogs being put down suggests this is rarely true.
One expert has previously said that doomed pets seem to know what’s about to happen: ‘A lot of them start to vomit or soil themselves the minute they enter the euthanasia room’.
But most ‘owners’ won’t know that, because most choose not to be there. In 2019, a vet revealed that 90% of owners refuse to be in the room when he injects their pets, so the ‘animal’s last moments are usually them frantically looking around for their owners’.
When their animal needed them more than ever, they put their own feelings first and walked away.
So if you’re quick to criticise Price, remember: It’s not just her. A lot of people shouldn’t have pets.
And that includes far more people than we can usually bring ourselves to admit.
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