You love your cat. Also sometimes you go away for three days and leave it a big bowl of dry food. We asked cat and dog owners to anonymously share their worst fears and guilty feelings about how they’ve treated their animals.
Is my dog heartbroken by my breakup?
My ex and my dog were very close. After we broke up, every morning he would run to the room my ex used as an office. He worked remotely and used to be home with him all the time. Now my dog is alone until the walker comes. I leave the TV on for noise. He doesn’t even play with toys, but I got all these weird interactive toys — like where you hide kibble and they have to flip a lid or spin a wheel to get the kibble out. I would just fill it and run away, sometimes in tears. I remember telling my therapist, “I’ve stopped crying over the breakup; now I’m just crying because I have to leave my dog alone during the workday.”
I got a camera so I could watch him during the day. And I’m like, Is he bored? Is he sad? Does he care? Now I’m dating again, and I have all this guilt about going out. If I stay home, my dog can kill the vibe. If you go into the bedroom, you have to shut the door on him; you can hear him outside breathing or his little toes on the hardwood floor. So I usually go to theirs. Then I don’t get home until two in the morning, and my dog has been alone all evening when I could have taken him on a sunset walk. He’s missing out because I went over to this guy’s house to have sex.
In This Issue
Is My Cat a Prisoner?
Is my cat a prisoner?
The number of cats I’ve lived with is up to 18. I grew up in Ohio, and I remember I would look out in the yard and I would see my cats running at full speed across the lawn, looking like lions, hunting and doing all the stuff cats do. I now live with two cats, Hermes and Olivia, in New York, and I’ve noticed how different their lives are now that they’re confined to a space. They are curious about the outside world. If it’s a hot day and I open the window, they’ll push their heads up against it and try to attract birds. They have a longing and curiosity for the outside world. The only time they were outside was when I took them from PetSmart into the car. I don’t want to say I’m their jailer because I love them, but when I open the door to my apartment, it’s clear that if she could, Olivia would run down the hall. If I were to defend myself in cat court, I would say that life with me is an improvement. But would they be happier running free in fields?
People think I’m an angel because I have a three-legged dog, but sometimes I wonder: Would she be better off dead?
I get compliments for owning a three-legged dog. People on the street will say, “You’re an angel!” I feel like a fraud because in getting a three-legged dog, I definitely wanted to be perceived as a good person. And it worked. People look at me like I’m Mother Teresa, and I sometimes feel like Mother Teresa for a second, only to realize what I’ve done, which is to hide the fact that I’m actually not a good person. I fear she’s stressed by city life. Sometimes she gets really scared of people. I think she thinks they’re moving toward her in a threatening way. I feel this tension around dog ownership, which I’m constantly reminded of because of the leg. I wonder if it would be more painless to let dogs die. We think it’s such a good thing to rescue them, but I fear their lives are worse. I have this recurring fear that if my dog could speak, she’d be like, “Help, I’m in pain” or “Let me die.”
Is the city too hot for my Samoyed?
I live in a small apartment with a Samoyed named Moose. People recommend crate training, but I could never do that. Imagine living in that cage for that long? I walk him a lot, but these dogs are from Siberia. I have the AC blasting 24/7 so he doesn’t overheat. If he has to go out during the day, during a heat wave, we have boots for him and try to stay in the shade. But I feel bad — and it looks fucking crazy, too — seeing a wolf when it’s hot as shit out. He’s happier in the winter. He’ll just stick out his face and bask in the wind. On July 4, we took him to Rockaway Beach. He was fine on the ferry, but when we got to the beach, I felt like an asshole. I was like, Fuck, I should have just left him at home. We had plenty of water for him, ice packs to put on his paws to cool him down, a canopy. But he pants a lot. Sticks out his tongue. We don’t want to abuse him, but we also don’t want to feel bad and leave him at home alone.
Why should I feel guilty for using an e-collar?
I’m in a Facebook group for poodle training. Somebody said, “I had a trainer recommend an e-collar.” People were like, “No, that’s torture.” So I gave my piece: I have a dog who has responded well to it and we were having a ton of reactivity issues. And then they deleted the comment. The admin messaged me saying the group does not endorse aversive training methods. This is a really big group with thousands of people from all over the country, even all over the world. And so if it’s a training group, how could you totally just remove a whole piece of training?
There’s a lot of misconceptions because these tools have been used improperly. First of all, these are not tools you should just buy off Amazon and use without having the proper training. You should not be cranking the collar up to 50 on the first try. Every dog is different, and you work up based on their distractions. We had a whole session of figuring out what our edge was. Like, okay, ten, he’ll come back. But if there are geese, we need to go to 15. It’s like a science. He only wears it when we’re hiking or when we’re in Central Park. And we’re not using it as a punishment; we’re using it to enforce commands. My dog is happier he can be out and not screaming at everything. We’re both happier. If it’s between my dog chasing a goose into the street or coming back to me because he gets a little zap, I’m choosing the zap.
Am I a monster for crating my dog when I leave the house?
My Jack Russell Terrier was a handful. He was aggressive, so I couldn’t really have him around other people or other dogs. He was scared of strangers and would bite them. I tried trainer after trainer. He bit the most recent one terribly. Every time I left the house, I would put him in his cage with his food and water. He had plenty of room in there, but as soon as I left he would flip his water, flip his food, and bark, literally nonstop. I would watch him on the dog camera, and I could see he was anxious. And once I arrived back home and let him out, he’d wag his tail super-fast and bark and hyperventilate. It was like he was saying, “Why did you leave me alone?” It gave me anxiety, like I was doing something wrong. I felt frustrated and stressed. I rushed a lot to accommodate him — I rushed so I could come back home and let him out. But at the end of the day, I still have stuff I need to do, and he can’t come with me everywhere. But when I put him in that cage, I felt like he was rebelling, saying, “Get me out of here.”
Does my dog miss the suburbs?
I have one small dog, Archie, and we live together in Brooklyn. I frequently feel that he deserves a better mom. I work at home, but it’s nine-to-five. By the time I’m done with my day, he’s having his witching hour and I’m so tired. He’ll start barking, and it’s really shrill. I’ll play with him, but sometimes I can’t give him my all, and I feel guilty about that because I am lazy and exhausted.
We used to live in the suburbs, but now we’re in a small studio. Back in the suburbs, one thing he loved to do is sit in a little couch indentation near the window and look out at the people and squirrels and other dogs and deer. And when we moved here, the first thing I got was an armchair near one of the windows because I wanted him to be able to jump up and look out. But I couldn’t afford to give him a good view. It’s just the backs of the buildings, and he’s not into it. There are facets of city life that bewilder him, like crosswalks, since he generally doesn’t like to walk on patterns. It’s hard to not internalize that kind of stuff as a failing of me as his owner.
Why did I treat these fish so terribly?
Betta fish were a popular pet when I was growing up. My worst fish-related offense was in high school. Where I’m from, there were wild house parties when someone’s parents were out of town. Everyone was drinking, everyone was on drugs. For a while it was popular to make betta fish fight. Betta fish should only be kept alone in tanks — you can’t put them in the same tank. We’d fill a bathtub and put two fish in the tub, and they would tear each other apart, and people would place bets on their fighter. I did that for a summer with my boyfriend. We killed a lot of fish and made money off it. It was pretty reprehensible. The fish would rip each other’s fins off, and then the dead one would flop belly up in the bath. I feel like some adult should have been like, “Hey, that’s not how you treat living things.”
Additional reporting by Bindu Bansinath and Esther Wang.
Is My Cat a Prisoner? And other ethical questions about pets like ….
➭ Are We Forcing Our Pets to Live Too Long?
➭ Why Did I Stop Loving My Cat When I Had a Baby?
➭ What Do Vets Really Think About Us and Our Pets?
➭ I Am Not My Animal’s Owner. So What Am I?
➭ Was I Capable of Killing My Cat for Bad Behavior?
➭ Should I Give My Terrier ‘Experiences’?
➭ Is There Such a Thing As a Good Fishbowl?
➭ Do Runaway Dogs Deserve to Be Free?
➭ Are We Lying to Ourselves About Emotional-Support Animals?
➭ Does My Dog Hate Bushwick?
➭ How Agonizing Is It to Be a Pug?