Last time: should we have pets at all?
Today: how we treat our pets ... especially cats
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Ethical cat care
- Is it ok to confine a cat indoors? (Cheryl Abbate)
- Is it ok to spay/neuter a cat?
- Is it ok to give a cat a longevity drug so they live for 30 years? (Hess)
- Is it ok to clone your cat? (Hess)
- Is it ok to dress you pet up for Halloween or artistic photography? (pictures in Hess)
Standard "humane" view: cats should be kept indoors for their own safety and the safety of wildlifeAbbate's view: cat guardians have a duty to allow cats outdoors during the day, if the environment is suitable (should consider traffic, predators)
- Indoor only
- Indoor plus free-roaming (during day, away from roads)
- Community cats -- cats are free to come and go, but may have favorite places and people
- Feral cats -- they avoid humans
- We have a prima facie duty to promote the wellbeing of our pets
- Prima facie duty -- a duty that is overridable, not absolute
- we can harm through deprivation -- the animal is denied something that would have been pleasurable -- e.g. the dog who never goes for a walk or never interacts with other dogs
- we can harm through infliction -- the animal actually suffers -- the dog demands a walk, sees other dogs through window
- Animals have wellbeing to the extent that they have a positive balance of pleasure over pain AND their pleasures are diverse and include ethological pleasures (p. 442)
- Physiological pleasures: eating, drinking, sleeping
- Ethological pleasures: innate, adaptive, done regardless of external reward, and especially pleasurable
"Second, there are ethological pleasures, which refer to the pleasures of performing certain skilled and controlled behavior. Examples include the pleasures of foraging (for foraging animals), hunting (for predators), and rooting (for pigs). These pleasures involve active engagement, cognitive challenge, and control....Observations of animal behavior inform us that ethological pleasures are more pleasurable than bodily pleasures." (p. 450)
"This all suggests that engagement, challenge, choice, and control are self-rewarding for most animals .... On the other hand, a lack of active engagement is identified as a primary cause of boredom, depression, and anxiety in animals .... Because the performances of certain natural behavior patterns are evidently especially pleasurable and are thus themselves necessary for well-being, promoting feline well-being requires more than just giving cats“the environmental endpoints” of their natural behaviors, i.e., their physiological needs; it requires that we moreover enable them to experience ethological pleasures..." (p. 450-451)
- cat guardians have a prima facie duty to give their cats time outdoors
- Hunting and territorial behavior are ethological pleasures for cats
- The indoor cat has lower wellbeing
- The indoor cat is harmed by deprivation, not necessarily infliction
- The indoor cat may have a longer life, but has a worse life
- Housecats are not great hunters
- The animals they kill are weaker, were going to die anyway
- Cat food has a higher kill-rate per calorie
- hunting is not an ethological pleasure for humans -- not innate (p. 458)
- human hunters kill best specimens, not animals who are going to die anyway (p. 458)