Pet Shops

Can friends be bought?

Pet shops. The very words send the message that animals are goods to be bought as required - and the animals they sell are destined to spend their lives in small cages. Rabbits, mice, exotic birds, foreign rodents – animals that are small enough to be put in cages that can sit in a corner of a child’s bedroom or on a hallway table. Pet shops breed animals constantly, and those that can’t be sold – when they’re no longer young enough for example – are killed. Exotic animals are taken from their natural habitats, and of course the importers reckon a certain degree of “loss” on the journey. In shops, these animals sit in cages of plastic and metal – the same cages that the shops encourage prospective “owners” to buy to keep the animals in at home.

Some animals find themselves in the homes of people who have a little more understanding of their need for freedom, and who try to give them a more natural life. But many are content to see these small creatures as decoration or as toys, and let them live their whole lives as prisoners. Still others neglect them, or become bored and get rid of them.

Finding new homes for small animals is difficult, because the pet shops always have new litters of baby rabbits or flocks of newly hatched budgerigars available. It’s even harder to find homes where the rabbit’s need to run in the forest, or the budgerigar’s need to fly is recognised. Pet shops feed on people’s ignorance – they have created a world where being an “animal lover” means imprisoning animals in solitary confinement.