It's Time to Limit Animal Rights

Looking into the steady gaze of my pet cat, I could easily imagine that she's experiencing the feline equivalent of boredom. It might then seem difficult to understand how she could be bored, since she has few restrictions placed on her daily activities. She can't destroy household items or family members, she must always use the litter box when performing certain bodily functions, and she can't go prowling in a few areas of the house for sanitary reasons. Overall, it's a liberal kitty-contract. In return for her adherence, she gets a safe place to live, regular meals, and plenty of human companionship. I've even overlooked many violations of the no-destruction rule over the years despite her taste for the cords of expensive electronic devices. Still, I can't help but imagine that she's bored with her mundane existence as a pet and yearns to stalk birds in the wild rather than intently observe them through the windows of my house.

Whether my cat is bored with her life or simply tired of the lack of variety of her meals, she'll continue in her present state until I decide otherwise. This apparent inequity exists because society doesn't give animals most of the same rights it does humans. The reasons for this generally have to do with animals being incapable of some kind of thought, usually rational or moral, that humans possess. Despite the second-class citizenship of animals that exists today, there is a heated debate in society over what, if any, rights animals are entitled to. The animal rights debate is an important one for human civilization, since its outcome will determine whether we can ethically continue such practices as eating animal meat or byproducts, keeping animals as pets, and using them in our scientific experi...

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...t animals have certain rights, at least in certain instances. Torturing or harming animals for no specific purpose certainly seems wrong. Any pain or death inflicted on an animal should only be done when there is a practical need, and the pain inflicted should be minimized to the fullest extent possible. I could even listen to a convincing argument that animals always have a right to a natural life, if such an argument existed. However, I think that the method for granting rights to living things is more complicated than determining their capacity for pain. Perhaps a being's capacity for moral thought should determine what rights it has. Human morality may even lead us to grant all animals a natural life, albeit for reasons other than the capacity they share with us for pain. For now, I'll let my cat's interest in discovering the joys of bird hunting go undeveloped.