NdukuOutLoud

Are pets really happy?

On my last piece, Let the Dogs Out-a response to the daily prompt “If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?”-I argued that it isn’t our pets who need to understand us, but us who need to learn from them. Animals are more in tune with the instincts and freedoms that make them unique.

That curiosity led me to ask: when did this whole ‘pet ownership’ begin? What’s different between then and now? And what might it mean to look more deeply at why we keep pets in the first place?

Ancient Utility

In ancient times, animals were kept for practical reasons. Dogs hunted. Cats controlled pests. Even today, in rural Kenyan homes, cats still fend for themselves, dogs still guard the compound. They don’t sleep in the house, they don’t eat gourmet kibble. They live as animals, not accessories.

This utilitarian relationship reminds us that pets once had clear roles-companions in survival rather than symbols of comfort.

Pets as Status Symbols

History also shows another side. The Greeks and Romans kept animals as status symbols-horses, talking birds, even lions and elephants. These weren’t companions; they were living emblems of wealth, power, and divine connection. Animals became mirrors for human ego, woven into art, mosaics, and literature to project prestige.

Sacred Meanings

Religion gave animals another role. In animist and totemic traditions, they were revered-snakes as fertility symbols, birds as messengers, lions as guardians. Over time, meanings shifted. The snake, once linked to regeneration, became in Christian lore a symbol of temptation and evil. Animals were re-scripted to fit human stories, often at their expense.

This evolution shows how deeply animals have carried human projections-spiritual, cultural, and moral.

The Commercial Age

Fast forward to the 20th century. Pet-keeping became a global industry worth hundreds of billions. The utilitarian bond turned into a marketplace of breeds, accessories, and curated diets. Dogs in sweaters. Cats on Instagram. Companionship packaged and sold.

We call it love, but it often looks like commercialization of pets-a transformation of instinct into commodity.

What We Might Be Losing

Animals were gifted with instincts-hunting, sensing danger, even detecting illness. But we’ve dulled those gifts. We feed them processed food instead of letting them hunt. We groom away their wildness. We mold them into something that resembles an animal but exists only to serve our desires.

And in doing so, we mirror our own estrangement from nature. We’ve domesticated ourselves too-trading instinct for convenience, freedom for comfort, wildness for polish.

An Invitation

So perhaps we should take a deeper dive into why we’re keeping our pets. That dog in a sweater is definitely not for protection. And the cat that has been eating buffets might not be very well equipped to kill the pests around you. So what is it really about?

Is it power, projection, a hidden yearning for connection-or have we simply been Instagram‑influenced into getting a cat to post cute pictures with?

Maybe the truest act of love is not to mold animals into our image, but to ask honestly why we keep them, and what that choice reveals about us.