Waste!

Am I wrong, or does this strike more of you as pointlessly wasteful?

Happy Birthday Dear Fido, Fluffy and Polly
Tue Feb 14, 2006 08:23 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – They already have their own designer clothes, health insurance and therapists. Now more and more American pets are enjoying their own birthday parties.

A surprising number of pet owners host birthday parties—complete with party hats, cake and guests–for their dogs, cats and birds, according to a survey released Monday by California-based Veterinary Pet Insurance.

The firm reported that 58 percent of its policyholders who responded said they had hosted birthday bashes for their pets.

Veterinary Pet Insurance, which marks the occasion by sending each insured pet a birthday card every year and a coupon for free food, said other surveys have calculated that about six million American dog and cat households celebrate birthdays.

Three Dog Bakery, a specialty store in upscale Newport Beach, California, gets about 20 requests a week for pet birthday cakes, said owner Sandy Deem.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

I have nothing against pet ownership, but it seems to me that when one is at the point of having birthday parties for pets, it’s time to evaluate spending habits. Imagine how many orphans the costs of six million birthday parties for pets would feed, clothe, and house annually, or how many missionaries the money could support.

Don’t even get me started on pet psychotherapy …

3 Replies to “Waste!”

  1. They need to get a life, adopt, or take in foster children. The animal rights movement along with the overemphesis on pets is sad when there are so many other more important problems in life. I read an article in Smithsonian a few days ago about the declining hippo population in Africa. The article was one of the best I have read on animal/environmental concerns because most of it delt with the political problems in Zimbabwe along with the hundreds of thousands of people who have died due to famine and the collapse of agriculture due to the corrupt leader giving his cronies free land. If you have corrupt leaders people starve and then end result is decreased biodiversity- but lets start at the top!

  2. It’s particularly sad when you remember the thriving agriculture Zimbabwe “inherited”. Those farms were thriving when the government took them over! The standard of living has fallen to abysmal levels.

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