Euthanized Cats and the Rights of Birds

Perhaps we need to rethink our ecology of companion animals. Here in Ventura County California, where Shanti and I live, authorities euthanized 1130 dogs and almost 1500 cats last year.

The numbers of euthanized pets are on the rise, despite robust adoption and rescue programs as well as an educational effort to encourage spaying and neutering. ( One can only guess at the number of abandoned or home-euthanized animals whose fates are off the grid.)

In commenting on the problem, Jolene Hoffman, director of the Humane Society here in Ojai, got to the heart of the matter: “People seem to think of animals as disposable.”

There you have it—the notion of animals as property.

Like old sofas or last year’s cell phone, we can dump companion animals and their offspring like garbage.

“An animal should be a lifetime commitment,” Hoffman says. And of course she’s right. But the real paradigm shift is to begin to think not exclusively in our own anthropocentric interest, but also in terms of the animal’s interests and rights. Foremost is the need to change from viewing animals as more junk and clutter to viewing sentient creatures as legal beings.

The right to life is irrelevant to things like water bottles and pebbles and paramount for beings like Shanti and me; so euthanasia of sentient beings should be avoided at all costs.

But what about the right to reproduce? Isn’t that also part of an animal’s interests? And what about the rights of native birds who are maimed, tormented and slaughtered by the billions by multiplying suburban and feral cats? Must all cats be kept inside or declawed in addition to being desexed in order to protect the birds who feed on our gardens and delight in our bird baths?

As Hoffman says, an animal must be a lifetime commitment, but the commitment is also to the quality of life of the animal, the habitat and the planet.

Taking animals seriously raise hard questions. There are multiple complex interests to be balanced. Wolves or sheep? Birds or cats? The right to live or the right to reproduce?

But we can only begin to properly address these issues in the context of animals as feeling beings, not as property. When we elevate the status of animals, we will complicate our lives and add to our responsibilities, but we will also atone for our trillion-fold sins of omission and commission against animals. We will rehabilitate the planet; we will restore our humanity; we will sustain a deep and beautiful ecology.