AMERICA AND ITS PETS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31967, 19 April 1969, Page 5

AMERICA AND ITS PETS

Aetrfficeek Feature Service

Among the many ballads sung about Ronald Reagan, the legendary Governor of California, is one that tells of the time he was getting bad vibrations from the family's mongrel dog. Reagan thought of spending $lOO on a psychiatrist for the dog. but then had a better idea -he spent $250. and both of them went to the psychiatrist.

Several questions leap to mind, but one is basic Was Reagan simply showing an exemplary open-mindedness here and an altogether endearing willingness t<i acknowledge that the fault could be his—or was he off his chump? The question is a critic* one—and not only for th< . voters of California. Becaust the United States as a wholt is to an unprecedented degree •a nation gone dotty over its pets, and it may be time tt ask whether we are merelj [[experiencing an unusua • flowering of interspecies gooc • will (God rest ye merry chimpanzee) or whether we’ve • got a latter-day epidemic ol neurotic animal-worship or Hour hands. Neurosis, of course, ii 1 largely in the eye of the headshrinker, pro or other : wise, and no didactic conclu sions will be offered here. Bui • it would not be presumptu ous to note that all the stat istics point to a national over indulgence of pets on a truh bizarre scale. The population figures alone are enough to impress Mat ■ Tse-tung. The best guess ii that there are nearly 30 mil Ilion pet dogs in the L'nitec States. 20 million cats, aboui the same number of cagec [birds, four million horses, un known millions of turtles hamsters and whatnots, anc maybe 500 million tanked fish. If they ever found a leader we'd all be dead ducks. Heavv Cost I According to a trade maga zine called “Pet Shop Man agement." the American pub lie spends well above $2 bil lion a year (other estimate: go up to $5 billion) to buyfeed, house and titillate iti pets—which comes to a mini mum of $4 a head a year foi every goldfish, gerbil anc guppie in the land Another way of looking al it is that the United States spends more on its pets than iit does on water purification [the Peace Corps and food stamps-for-the-starving combined. What is at issue here is not the inalienable right of every red-blooded American boy to make his parents take old Spot for a walk. Quite the contrary. Child psychologists are now generally agreed on the theory that pets are good for kids, just as everyone always thought. Indeed, psychologists are [finding that a pet dog can work miracles on the attitude and behaviour of disturbed 'kids, particularly those burd ened with cruel or unloving parents. Mentally retarded children also seem to achieve a warmth and closeness tc animals that they can’t man age with the superior and im patient people around them At the other end of the age scale, many old persons find that a cat or a bird turns out ito be their best and literally their last friend on earth This is equally true of an other class of people who face constant loneliness and bore dom—imprisoned criminals—and several enligbtenedgaols now allow Inmates to keep birds or fish. So the lame, the halt and the blind, and every official variety of misfit, do very well by their animals. The pet-craze begins to seem really promiscuous, as usual, only when you turn your attention to what the nice folk are up to.

p: They are up to conspicuI ous consumption, for one ’•[thing— and on a level that y would make old Thorstein Veblen spin in his grave like ' a lathe. Elizabeth Taylor e rents a yacht to house her dogs in England, and Richard ' Nixon buys a marble tomho stone to mark the final resting place of his celebrated “ cocker. Checkers. •r The proletariat goes in for the same sort of thing on a much wider—and maybe nuttier—scale. Cat-lovers feed al i their pets filet mignon, name le [them their heirs, hire baby[sitters for them when they ,e [go out and even buy somele| thing called “litter screens" •e to “preserve pussy’s privacy." [s And if one is going to get hit by a bus, one is much 0 better off if one is a dog. ly.All the major cities in the ,1 United States and Britain . have splendid, well-financed animal hospitals with the •’i most up-to-date emergency S and surgical facilities. They I also have one huge advan tage over people hospitals—- , poverty is no drawback p It is along in here that ' the animal lover crosses the M different lines from affection to affectation to real looniII ness. which comes in all ['[models and sizes. But the '’ common denominator is that ■j the pet-nut stops loving his ■ animals for their own sakes, and in their own right, and ' begins to make people-substi- ” tutes out of them. . A Hungarian - Englishwoman named Kathleen Szasz “ has put together an outraged J •compendium called “Petia shism,” published earlier this year, in which the pet-nut J is shown to be a very strange ? creature indeed—as witness a the New York mother who cannot bear to kiss or carry ■[her two-year-old child because he “makes her nervous,” but who carries a Chihuahua around with her all day and sleeps with it at a- night. nfl.! Bedroom Trouble* “ Animals in the bedrooms :’ cause a lot of trouble. An . American heiress another ' Chihuahua - fancier rather Illiked having the dogs in bed with her at all times. When ..her poor husband finally | kicked one of the little ~beasts down the stairs, she " i called the Society for the Pre- / vention of Cruelty to Animals. L had him arrested and later divorced him. |t Even more common is the . woman who makes a baby ’ 0 ; out of her pet—usually after d years of having done the re- “ verse. Mrs Szasz tells of a ■ s London woman, well known n in her neighbourhood for d pushing along a pram con- ]. taining a young chimpanzee. The chimpanzee has his own bed at home, a closet full n of clothes and toys, loves TV, !e and often accompanies his d mummy to the pub for a half- -- P‘ nt g The London woman’s chimd panzee is a sign of the times e in more ways than one. More 0 and more pet-fanciers are growing bored with dogs, cats, a . parakeets and guppies, and n are looking to other species , e for novelty. A Several different kinds of lt monkeys are available in the •y I larger pet stores, and there have been recent fads in jl hamsters, skunks, boa cone strictors, Argentine toads. t . vultures and gerbils, the last _ a four-inch desert marsupial Isifrom the Middle East that P 1 Barbra Streisand has popularised. There may be an advantage y|to this trend to oddball pets e[after all. So far as is known. “I no wife has yet insisted on t ’ [ bringing her boa constrictor g or Argentine toads to bed with her.