Our moral betters are at it again in their eternal quest to rob the rest of us of all joy and happiness, so that we may better understand the icy darkness that inhabits their vacant souls.

Dogs lead lives of loneliness. Grey parrots die years earlier than their natural lifespans. And it is hard to fathom the boredom of pet fish.

"And it is hard to fathom the boredom of pet fish."

Yes, yes it is.

Primarily because they're fish.

I had fish for a while; they had their problems, but I'm pretty sure existential crises of self-worth were not among them.

Author Troy Vettese never again directly addresses the national crisis of bored fish, but he does expand a bit on his indictment of the other pets he is trying to save, and by save, I mean eliminate.

Keep in mind that Vettese worked at Harvard University as a William Lyon Mackenzie King postdoctoral research fellow, so you can be sure his arguments will be well-researched and airtight. However, that assumes you don't spend more than five seconds examining them – because if you do, you will find a collection of barely-relevant links to cherry-picked data (that itself is distorted) to support an argument that is about as airtight as a Chinese Spy Balloon after an encounter with a F-22-borne Sidewinder.

First up, your lonely dog.

Many animals survive this war of attrition, but lead lives of loneliness.

You know who understands loneliness?

People like Vettese, what with their inability to form lasting emotional connections with anything beyond their own sense of self worth.

Recently, the German government mandated one-hour daily walks for dogs because many were not getting enough attention or exercise.

He links to an article from 2020, citing a German Agricultural Minister who had proposed such a law.

That's not an argument: That's cheerleading. Sorry, Vettese, but "Taylor, Taylor, he's our man, if he can't do it no one can" is not ironclad proof of Taylor's on-field talents.

It's also useful to note that Germans passing laws might not be the high moral ground he thinks it is.

Ah, but there is more to it than that.

You might not know this, but sometimes dogs die. In accidents, no less!

Other harms may similarly cut a pet's life short. Dogs are often hit by vehicles, fall out of them, or bake in them.

What?!

Now that I'm thinking about it, people are also often hit by vehicles, fall out of them, or bake in them, particularly children.

Time to get rid of people, too?

You know that's on the menu as well.

It gets worse!

Pet ownership causes physical and psychic wounds to humanity too. Dogs kill about 25,000 people worldwide every year (mostly through rabies).

This murderous rampage of dogs must end!

Well, in India, anyway. (Yeah, I clicked through. They never think you're going to click through.)

While it is very rare for someone in North America or Western Europe to die of rabies, an estimated 20,000 people die in India each year from the disease due primarily to the prevalence of stray dogs.

Yeah. That's... different.

No matter, Vettese isn't done yet!

By comparison, fewer than a dozen people are killed by sharks.

Does that mean we can have pet sharks?

But Australian horses are out, I'm afraid.

Pets make us sick too, by spreading monkeypox, brain parasites, ringworm and Lyme. Australian horses were the disease vector for the deadly Hendra virus, which emerged in 1994.

He goes on.

Epidemiologists note that dog feces are the "dominant source of aerosolized bacteria" in US cities because owners stoop and scoop only half the time.

Honestly, dogs could make the same charge against us.

On to the parrots! Surely he makes his case here!

Two in five pluck themselves ("feather destruction") out of boredom...

"African grey parrots."

That's kind of... specific.

I clicked through that one too, and found this:

FDB [feather-damaging behaviour] prevalence can be 40% in some species (e.g. grey parrots, Psittacus erithacus)...

Aha! We must put an end to this monstrous practice of...

...yet in similar living conditions, other species (e.g. Senegal parrots, Poicephalus senegalus) rarely display it [12,13,27 – 29].

Oh.

So, he found one species where this is a problem. Seems like if he really cared about animals he'd focus on this one species rather than, you know, ending the ownership of all pets.

He further notes that,

...and most die years earlier than their natural lifespan.

I clicked through that one as well, and that's not what the study says. It was designed to examine the shortening of telomeres further noting that,

...a larger study and preferably using longitudinal sampling is needed to adequately test the consequences of TL attrition on longevity.

Who needs science when you have ideology!

On to the logic portion of Vettese's treatise:

If people love cats, why are there 3m domesticated cats (Felis catus) in the Netherlands, but only 14 European wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris)?

If people love domesticated cats, why are there more domesticated cats than animals that are not domesticated cats? Yeah! Um...

Here's another blockbuster citation:

A study found that compared with peers without pets, Slovak bird owners showed more interest in birds, but less empathy.

What was this study based on?

In this paper, we investigated relationships between Slovakian grammar school pupils' attitudes to, and knowledge of, birds (n = 402 participants aged 10 – 19 years).

402 Slovakian grammar school students.

You know what else pets do? They eat meat!

No, seriously.

If US pets were a country, they would rank fifth globally in terms of meat consumption – greater than Germany. Carnage at this scale is unnecessary because dogs can be vegan, yet only 1.6% are.

(Actually 0% are – the 1.6% just have bad owners.)

Vettese might not be aware of this, but these are animals that eat other animals. It's called nature.

But remember, you're the bad guy who doesn't truly understand the nature of animals.

Rather than seeing other animals as autonomous beings with their own lives, desires and cultures, they are reduced to mere dolls.

Vettese would never do that.

He just wants to turn them all into vegans. Just like him.

Just sayin'.

Vettese has so much gosh darn empathy for animals, he wants entire species to disappear from the face of the earth.

Nor is it enough to walk away from pet ownership individually. To create a world without pets, we must collectively decide to shut down puppy mills, to spay and neuter pets and to support conservation programs that humanely capture feral animals.

"We must collectively decide."

Yeah, he's a socialist, because they all are. Given how widespread pet ownership is worldwide, which Vettese himself cites, this "collective decision" will be anything but. And make no mistake, he wants to wipe these creatures from the face of the earth. No more house pets.

And the feral ones who escape? He wants to go after those, too, until they are all gone. Every one.

But what about you animal lovers out there? The people who have the capacity to develop deep emotional bonds with animals, a relationship that has developed over millennia and enriches us all in ways both practical and beyond?

Not to worry, if you have the same love and affection for animals that Vettese so clearly demonstrates, you can still enjoy them.

From really, really, far away, so you don't get all that hair and dander all over your black skinny jeans. Yuck!

In a post-pets era, we could still enjoy the company and beauty of animals, but from afar as naturalists in a wilder world

Someone is still mad at his dad for not getting him that puppy he wanted for Christmas in 2003.

Lest you think Vettese is a one-off kook, this movement is endemic among environmental activists. I wrote about this soulless ghoul last year.

And others are applauding this empty dystopian future.

Dr. Vettese eloquently writes about perhaps my most unpopular opinion: if we really care about animals we have to move away from pets.

Did none of these people have a dog growing up?

That exchange took a dark, and totally predictable turn.

And in case you were wondering about Reece,

They are self-parody.

These are not people who care about animals, humans, or anything beyond their cult-like devotion to "the planet," one devoid of joy and ruled over by humorless scolds.

This is what they don't understand, can't understand, never will understand:

"Humans cannot exist without dogs, without cats, without goats, without chickens," Youssef [a veterinarian rescuing pets and farm animals in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey] said in Arabic. "They are part of our families, like a mom or a dad. They give us food, they give us happiness, they give us comfort. We would not be without them."

Now go pet your dog.