Of Mice and Men In Matching Outfits
In a suburban chain-store wasteland, I discovered America. Amidst the big boxes that poked from this sea of asphalt, somewhere between the Home Depot and the Costco and the Executive Tanning Salon (honestly) was a PetSmart, which was where I was headed along with my friend Hannah, in search of a “cat tree” for her newly-acquired kitty.
I try to avoid malls, sprawling chain-store districts and other zones of overbearing consumerism, but sometimes forays into such territories are necessary. Sometimes, these excursions are entertaining — the people-watching and product-ogling opportunities are far more numerous and outrageous than those offered in the more subdued, urban commercial areas near my house. This trip into the uncharted suburbs — Here Be Monsters, In SUVs With W’04 Stickers — was especially enlightening.
Like all proper explorations, this one yielded astonishing discoveries and more questions:
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PetSmart has a 14-day live bird guarantee. If you buy a finch and it dies a week later, just follow these instructions: “1. Return bird within 14 days. 2. Show receipt for full refund.” Easy to follow. But, somehow, such cold directness does not give me a lot of confidence in the well-being of the birds — it makes it seem as though returns (in other words, deaths) are commonplace. Are their finches so fragile, their parrots so precious, that they kick the birdie bucket within a fortnight of being removed from their pals at Petsmart? And have we learned nothing from Monty Python about the difficulty of dealing with defective parrots? Also, who buys finches? They don’t seem to fit any of the usual characteristics that people look for in pets: cute, cuddly, smart, entertaining.
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To what extent do pet owners believe that pet attire reflects the animal’s particular personality or sense of style? Are people who buy tiger-stripe collars for their cats trying to boost their kitty’s self-esteem? Do punks buy studded collars for their cats, or just people who think their cats really dig the Ramones? Is it appropriate to buy a leather outfit for a cat named “Fluffy”? Doesn’t that diminish its fluffiness and therefore create complex identity issues that will eventually require hours of kitty-therapy to resolve? Pet clothing appears to be limited to dogs and, to a lesser extent, cats — no snake suits or mouse muumuus, as far as I saw, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they exist.
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Do accessory dogs really need their own accessories? Apparently they do, given the sheer number of outfits available for those canines whose natural habitat is apparently the handbag. If your dog lives in a bag, one would think that doesn’t need little red ruby slipper things for its paws or a cute little polo shirt in tastefully preppy hues, but there are many such pieces of clothing for dogs. One item even had a fake fur collar, which strikes me as downright creepy, considering that these animals tend to have real fur on their very bodies.
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On top of the overall absurdity of clothes for pets, there were a number of holiday outfits for the discerning cat or dog, namely Halloween costumes and Christmas-y getups. Do animals celebrate holidays? I have also heard of yarmulkes and even “bark-mitzvahs” for dogs, though no brises. Are pets expected to convert to their owners’ religious beliefs? Does an agnostic dyslexic canine wonder if there is a dog, and if so, does it even recognize its own existence?
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How do you tell if your beta fish in a shot glass-size “bowl” is still alive? With no space to swim, they just sort of tread water. Blue water, no less. Near the entry to the store, there were several shelves filled with these fish-in-a-thimble things. It looked suspiciously like something you might see at a frat hazing rite, and we quickly made our way to the next aisle before some drunk guy in a toga and carrying a paddle could command us to have a couple “fish-shots.”
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Do pets actually appreciate different shapes and flavors of chew toys? Among the catnip-filled toys for the junkie feline were an octopus-like thing that had only six legs, and pink Barbie brand mini-mittens. Mice-shaped toys I can understand. Cats chase mice. But amputee octopi and mittens? And what of the ice cream cone-shaped and ice cream-flavored wooden blocks for rabbits and guinea pigs? Who does the quality-control for these things? Is there someone whose job consists of tasting animal chew toys to make sure they really do taste like carrot or ice cream? Curiously, there were no such flavor variations in the bird or fish sections. I guess people just don’t feel the same urge to personify animals that they can’t walk or pet.
All of these questions build to a greater query: Why are Americans so obsessed with every detail of their pet’s well-being? What does it say about our society that there is demand for these products — the wooden faux-carrots, the doggie polo shirts? Are we simply trying to live vicariously though our pets when we provide them with such unnecessary creature comforts?
It was the (over-the-counter) anxiety medication for cats that really made realize that perhaps American culture has crossed some sort of threshold. The very existence of such a product reveals the depth of Americans’ concerns about fitting a particular social mold. (Stick with me here. . . .) Given the many products meant to give a pet a particular identity, one defined by the owner, it’s clear that people regard their pets as extensions of their own identity. We want their appearance to match ours, their food to be as wholesome as ours, and to taste the same as ours, too, and we want all of these things to fit the cultural norm. Including, it seems, their personality. To give your cat feline Zoloft is to signal your own discontent and a desire for your cat — and therefore you — to fit societal standards for proper behavior and ideal demeanor.
Frankly, I think that if we are so concerned that our pets act like us, and can afford to buy the clothes, toys and drugs to make this happen, we should probably be grateful that we can afford the luxury of worrying about such things. I mean, really: A dog in a fur coat in a handbag is a sure sign of a screwed-up society.
Doug Mack (doug@professoryeti.com) isn’t really a cat person or a dog person — he’s a rabbit person.
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