The Pet Set

 
I’ve never regarded myself as a pet person though there have been pets in my home most of my life. As a kid there was always a family dog. Two were great Danes. There was always a cat or two. There was even a pet skunk. As an adult I’ve never owned a dog though there usually have been cats. These were acquired if not accidentally at least incidentally, such as the two kittens given to me by my sister who had rescued a pregnant stray or the two cats I inherited from my parents. (I don’t count the animals including horses during my brief marriage as my pets: they were hers.) I like the critters, of course, and tend to spoil them, but I didn’t seek them out. They just came my way. I’m not looking for more.

The family dog and I, 1969

This makes me increasingly out of step with the times. In part it is a generational thing. In today’s world of declining marriage and birthrates, pets are assuming a greater importance in people’s lives: for GenX more than Boomers, for Millennials more than GenX, and most of all for Zoomers (b. 1997-2012 – yes, many are adults now). According to a OnePoll survey of 2000 pet owners, as reported in The New York Post, a plurality of Zoomers say they get more pleasure out of making their pets happy than their partners happy. 70% of Zoomers say they would rather have a pet than a child, and 57% say they love their pet more than any sibling. 50% say they love their pets more than their mothers.
 
53% of all respondents (across generations) say their pets are more a part of the family than their childhood pets were. This is reflected in their spending. Jonathan Wainberg, senior vice president of Synchrony Pets said, “We’ve found that the total cost of care for a dog over a lifetime ranges from $20,000-$55,000. The estimated cost of care for a cat over a lifetime was between $15,000-$46,000.” Well, if one judges strictly by expenses, I suppose that is a bargain compared to raising a child to age 18, which according to the USDA is close to $300,000.
 
It is reflected in real estate, too, according to Zillow, whether rental or sales. 55% of Zoomers say a pet-friendly house is more important than a child-friendly one. 48% say a fenced back yard is crucial when it comes time to purchase. 24% say they will look for a new home if the current one is unsuitable for the pet; only 12% say they would do the same for a spouse.
 
While I think the rise in the status of pets in modern society is real and has multiple causes, I chalk up many of the extreme responses from Zoomers to youth. The oldest of them are 26. Some no doubt have experienced serious loss in their lives (by the odds, some must) but I’d venture to say that most have not yet done so. In my decades on this planet I’ve buried pets and I’ve buried family members. I’m sentimental about the former to be sure, but the two do not compare. The experience prompts us to make any number of revaluations of the important things in life. In pet matters, at least, in a few decades Zoomers’ survey answers may look more like those of Boomers today. How scary is that? 
 

The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog