Pets - Any Point?

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i dont like pets either, especially dogs.

I understand where you're coming from, but I enjoy pets around to have someone to love and care for that will love me unconditionally back.

They are less work than a child would be so less stress, and they don't talk back.

Pets are sort of like brothers or sisters, and it's just as crushing when one of them passes away.

I love my 3 cats and 2 dogs. The cats are useful for getting rid of rodents and I like having the dogs around when my husband is out of town. But even if they didn't do all that, I would keep them as pets. They love you unconditionally, and they are fun to cuddle with. However, one of my dogs farts uncontrollably - I could do without that. He makes up for it by being extremely cute

I had a cat who saved my life, by loving me when I considered myself incapable of being loved. She entertained me, listened to music with me, comforted me when I was sick and shared all of the best moments of my life with me. I will never forget Samantha. She made me love Siamese cats, especially Lynx points. I couldn't imagine life without a cat.

You know, I think that my black lab / border collie mix Sadie would save my life if there were some sort of crisis. She got into the shower once and started nudging me. This was weird because she hates water. Finally I got worried enough to get out of the shower. As it turned out, she had bad diarrhea and wanted to get me to let her out. I was quite surprised that she did that so she wouldn't crap in the house. Also, when I had my gall bladder out, she stayed next to me in bed and chased away anyone who came to disturb me (cats, etc., and even my husband). She's a great dog!

Pets make me feel like living.

Cats are ok. Rodents are ok. Fish are boring. Birds are a lot of fun. Dogs depress me - I feel so obligated to them; most dogs are just far too subservient.

Still wouldn't have a pet on my own though. Only ever had them for others.

Thanks for all the replies. Sigh. Looks I am weird, after all.
I'm not denigrating anybody who loves their animal. But I just can't get that concept at all.

Don't worry, you're not alone. I can't really get the pets concept either. To be honest, I'm relatively neutral, and would probably (and have) been quite happy to have family pets around the place.

My biggest problems are with my OCDs, which mostly revolve around germs, dirt, parasites etc and I can't get the association of animals with these things out of my head - it's bad enough with my kids LOL

Apologies to all the pet lovers here - I can tell by the many posts on the subject of animals that I'm pretty unusual in this aspect as well. Having said that, there were a bunch of cute feral cat kittens in the grounds at work recently - enough to melt even my hard heart! LOL

Five of my nine cats are feral cats.

Thanks Cernunnos. I haven't any OCD issues, and I'm fine with feral/wild animals as well as other peoples' pets. But I'm just not comfortable with having an animal living in my house and dependent on me, or me getting dependent on having one around.
It makes me actually shudder when I see somebody treat their pet like a baby, calling them baby-names, kissing them, talking to them as if the animals could understand every word. I see it as being emotionally abusive to the animal. An animal has its own personality and needs and should be respected as such; it shouldn't be treated as a toy or a surrogate child.

Considering the fact that I've had a horse and a mammoth jack both beg me to treat them that way, I don't think that they all see it as abusive or irritating. The word "abuse" has been bandied about until it is meaningless in this context, also. If the dog's water bowl is the wrong color, it's abuse. If you don't show the proper respect, it's abuse. If you don't kiss animal rights activists buttocks, it's abuse.

You remind of my friend's dog, a black lab named Maggie. She used to like lying behind the sofa in my friend's living room. She would fart, and then come tearing out of there as if she were terribly embarrassed. We would laugh so hard-until the smell hit us!

I know what you're going through. About 5 years ago my 12-year-old lab/collie cross died, a few days after ingesting rat poison (we still don't know how it happened). 5 months later, we adopted our lab/Akita cross.