Truly sad to see such people and even sadder when such people are part of your own family. For whatever dysfunctional reasons they don't marry or spawn. They collect animals and treat them like children. The only difference being that with the kids, you can eventually get them to clean up their own messes and sometimes even yours, while the ersatz momma has to clean them up all their lives long. Maybe. Very often they don't clean up the filth. Occasionally their kids will eat their own messes, but that's just something else 'special that Junior has done today' for mommy to share with uninquiring people.

BY pontificating about a person you know absolutely nothing about, you are making yourselves look like absolute fucking idiots. You have no business appraising a stranger, especially one who is at a point in her life where CLEARLY having some pets and having fun naming them is more important / responsible than having children. I mean she could take the path you all are on by having 5 or 6 kids by the age of 23 and barely having the money to put a morsel of food in their stomachs... or, she can enjoy the process of obtaining a pet. You people are what's wrong with this country. You are so miserable and absolutely stagnant and have nothing better to do than make fun of a total stranger LIKE A FUCKING CHILD rather than try and bring people together.

Gee, Mike.

Project much?

Ah, "bring people together." A popular plaint. Are you, Mike, perhaps a rejected breeding party undone by kittens?

"the path you all are on by having 5 or 6 kids by the age of 23..."

Would all those here on that specific path please sign in?

Thank you.

At first glance the lives these people lead appear to be sad, but really, would you want them to breed?

Have to agree with Rob about Mike, I think there's a lot of projection going on there, and the caps hint of barely suppressed rage as well. At least he didn't use any exclamation marks; a sure sign of a twisted mind.

Sweet, charming Mike, dearest. Let's fisk, shall we?
1. "one who is at a point in her life where CLEARLY having some pets and having fun naming them is more important / responsible than having children." Yes, that is clearly a more important thing for any living being. Ask Adam...or Eve. And what would the 90s be without all the necessary fun, right?

2. "I mean she could take the path you all are on by having 5 or 6 kids by the age of 23 and barely having the money to put a morsel of food in their stomachs... " I am guilty, guilty dammit, of this very thing. So I'm signing in. All the whelping I done, and brung children into the world where they done never had enought to eat, because they wuz whinin'I'm Hungry. ALL THE TIME. It never occurred to me, however to smother one of the dear little fartlings, being against the law and all that. So I just raised them to feed themselves. The variety of kibble is much better with actual children than with domestic animals, though.
3. You people are what's wrong with this country." Yes, making taxpayers to fund the hobbies of the indolent is what we do bestest of all.
4. "You are so miserable and absolutely stagnant"
Rearing children is NOT the same as changing the water in the fish tank and skimming the dead guppies out of the water. No stagnancy involved.
5. "and have nothing better to do than make fun of a total stranger LIKE A FUCKING CHILD" Yes, that pretty much sums up your mindset. Children aren't a gift from God, noooo no no. They are mere nouns to be modified with the F-bomb. You just ooze charm and loveliness, Mikey.
6. "rather than try and bring people together." Whatever that means. I once rued the day I didn't have my twins sewn together, as it would have made raising terrible two year olds less terrible and more stationary. And of course, bringing people together is a very costly process, since it usually requires building several 'camps' and ghettos, depending on what you wish to do with them once you've gathered them all.
Enjoy your kumbafuckingyah moment, Mikey.

I'm not sure if I am more nauseated or frightened that I share a country with such poor souls.

As a father of three children, actual human children, and the owner of two dogs, two parakeets and a bunny, I know from first hand experience that children are not pets. I've tried to get them into a kennel and they just won't go quietly. And the older they get the harder it is to fit them in there.

Jewel, thank you for the fisk :)

People who treat animals like human children are doing their pets a disservice. They refuse to see them and love them for what they are.

A pet is not a doll or a roleplaying game accessory. A pet is not a child. It is a domesticated member of the animal kingdom. It can be your assistant in many things and a beloved member of your household; but it is not a human child.

If you ask it to be one, it may try hard to please you. Asking animals to do the impossible on a daily basis is an act of cruelty (or insanity), but not love.

You are the human. You are responsible for your pet's welfare. Let your pet be what it was meant to be -- the animal under your care. If you want to roleplay, get a doll instead.

Of course, it could just be that this is a case of the impoverishment of the spectrum of love in popular culture. A lot of people think that your casual friends and acquaintances are "the family you choose", and then are disappointed when reality doesn't work that way. So if the only references someone has for non-sexual permanent, unconditional love is love of children, they have to think of their pets in terms of children.

This explains the hostility to bursting the bubble. They think that if you don't love your pet like a child, you're suggesting that they dropkick their kittens out the car window at 75 mph -- because there just isn't any other way to love them for life.

I'm sure divorce and other personality destabilizers in society also have an influence. Pets, if they're indoor ones, can't leave you except through death. Human loves can abandon you. So they go for the "lacks sapient free will, but is cute and cuddly" option. A desperate search for some kind of control and stable love in a changing world.

I have no children, my life just worked out that way. I've had cats aplenty, but never saw them as 'children,' since their short little lives don't really equate.

I feel no hostility to people who "breed," the gay militant's and progresive whiner's malignant dismissal of that most essential of biological purposes. Perhaps "Mike" could enlighten us as to his orientation. I do hope Mike likes to save and wisely invest money, since he has no use for a pool of younger people to transfer entitlement payments to him in his dotage. I'm assuming he'll reach 'dotage,' although his bitterness may shorten his life.

But alas, it appears Mike has flounced most flufferly. One hopes, Señor Rodrigo, that dotage doesn't rhyme with frottage, else he finds himself dotty with his cats in his lonely little cottage.

It is best that certain people don't breed; and it is good that they do not do so voluntarily.

Mike is already a "cat lady."

Meow.