PET HATE!
Don't give me that look....
People assume, because I’m a vegetarian, that I like animals. The thing is, I don’t. I mean I really don’t. Oh sure, I’m as partial to a penguin as the next person and I like monkeys alright… it’s pets I don’t get.
I’ve recently realised that admitting to finding dogs, cats, hamsters and all those other hairy, or worse, scaly, things people have at home a turn-off, is tantamount to confessing I vote Tory or think Stephen Fry’s an idiot (which I don’t, in case you’re wondering).
People look at me like I’m some cold-hearted bitch (which I’m not, in case you’re wondering) who must just not understand the joy a small, fury thing could bring me.
Look, you can show me all the pictures of your kitten dressed as an elf or your guineapigs getting married you like – I’m not budging. I personally find the thought of sharing my home with anything other than a housetrained homosapien a bit gross.
I know this is controversial, but it’s about time I came clean as I just can’t feign interest in your fury friends any longer.
what the...?
I think it was a recent encounter with two sphynx cats that really confirmed my feelings on this matter.
My mum’s neighbours, a lovely young couple, very kindly invited us over for a glass of Cava when I last visited her in Brighton. John opened the door with a creature in his arms like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was all pink and fleshy and wrinkly with these ridiculous pointy ears and horrible rat-like tail. Why hadn’t my mum waned me?!
I must have re-sculpted my expression of horror into a manic grin quite well, because John held out this alien of an animal and said: “You can hold him if you like…”
Crippled by social graces and not wanting to upset the guy who changes my mum’s light bulbs and scrapes the ice of her doorstep, I held out my arms. I turned my head so John couldn’t see I was gagging and squeezing my eyes tight shut. I felt the cat’s cold paws claw at my new Paul Smith shirt and let out a gasp.
“Adorable isn’t he?” John cooed as his lovely wife Alice came to join him at the door, low and behold wearing another mottled pink sphynx around her shoulders. Great – they had two of the things!
Not only did John and Alice spend the entire hour we were in their company talking about all the crazy cute stuff their freakish cats did on a daily basis, they showed us an entire album full of photos of them as extra-weird looking kittens.
I even spotted a book on their coffee table entitled Is Your Cat Gay?
She hasn't left Hull for 20 years, but at least she has 16 cats who all love her very much
So you see, it’s not just pets themselves I have a problem with, it’s the unhealthy obsession of their owners who will happily forget to top up your drink or take your coat because they’re only interested in showing you a certain expression the cat pulls when you rub its belly.
My dislike of animals is something that’s only developed in my adult life. As a kid, I had a healthy relationship with the three-legged, one-eyed moggy my parents had inherited from our flat’s previous owner. They hated the thing, although they fed it and took it to the doctor’s like it was a cantankerous old aunt who comes to stay and never leaves. I fed it Playdough and made it hats, then one day it went for a walk and never came back.
And I had hamsters, three of them in fact, as instead of seeing it as an opportunity to teach me about loss, each time one died my folks softened the blow and bought me another. Sugar, Chuffnal ‘Chuffy’ The Third and Tutankhamen are all buried in Bina Gardens.
My kinda hamster
It was once the last of my hamsters had gone up to that big running wheel in the sky, that I realised how free and liberating my life could be without a pet.
I’ve never looked back.
So there you are. Call me cruel, call me heartless – I’m not the one paying £400 to put my cats in a cattery every time I go on holiday, or the one not buying that nice Mulberry Messenger because my dog needs a private yoga instructor or a diamante collar.
So why am I a vegetarian if I feel such antipathy towards our four-legged friends? I don’t like animals. Why the hell would I want to eat one?
