Pet ownership is often wrapped in a happy, sunny narrative: our loyal companions get to live a life of quiet luxury composed of getting to sleep as much as they want, filling their stomachs with delicious food and snacks conveniently prepared by someone else, and receiving daily cuddles. But if we let go of this belief, we uncover a darker web of moral dilemmas we rarely address. It forces us to confront the questions of whether pet ownership is ethical and if what we are offering these animals is a meaningful and fulfilling life.

To uncover why our relationship with animals has become so profoundly unethical, we first need to focus on how their domestication started.

Let’s look at dogs for instance: dogs diverged from a now-extinct population of wolves about 27,000-40,000 years ago, which is roughly when we started domesticating them. The going theory is that wolves became attracted to food scraps and shelter spaces around human camps. Over time, a few of them lost their fear of humans and became tame, enabling us to use their assistance for hunts, to sniff out herbs and truffles, or to guard our livestock. When the going got tough, we also used them as an emergency food resource, but let’s not focus on that…

The point is that it was a symbiotic relationship, a partnership even, that kickstarted our co-evolution and turned them from fierce and wild creatures into the cute, loveable little puppies we walk around with today.

A similar thing happened in our relationships with wild cats and horses. We offered them food and protection and they kept our houses free of rodents or carried our loads and transported us from city to city.

However, these deals don’t exist anymore because we’ve simply evolved beyond the point where animal assistance is required. We mechanised the food industry and farming process, so we don’t need the strong noses and alertness of our dogs anymore. Likewise, our homes are built firmly now, keeping them (mostly) rodent-free, and we have trains and cars to transport us, removing the need for cats and horses as pest control or travel aids.

The only reason why we keep animals around now is for companionship. And while this is enough for us, we must ask ourselves, is it enough for them?

Listen, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that your dog or cat doesn’t love you. There is a sufficient amount of evidence that suggests that the bond we have with our pets is reciprocal. The cuddles, licks and affectionate purrs they give us are not just a thank-you for their daily supper.

However, there is still the outstanding question of whether the toys, scratching trees, and playtime we provide them with are enough to effectively satisfy their natural, wilder instincts.

In truth, playtime provides some stimulation but it isn’t enough to engage their predatory and foraging behaviours, which is why cats get zoomies, for example. In fact, studies are revealing that a lot of pets are facing a lack of exercise and socialisation–In other words, pets really shouldn’t be kept alone. More so, they are frequently confronted with boredom, neglect, and sometimes even abandonment.

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Knowing that they are dependent on someone else for every single one of their needs can also be a source of stress for them and domestication has been linked to physiological damage, including loss of neural plasticity and a long-term activation of the fight-or-flight response, which can affect immune function.

Sleeping all day and having everything prepared for you might be a lush life for a human being, but for an animal it can be a profoundly frustrating, jarring, and even cruel experience.

So can life in our company, or captivity if we are being completely honest, really be meaningful and fulfilling to animals?

Now, a couple of critics will argue that pets just can’t survive without us, making discussions about the ethics of pet ownership obsolete because it’s necessary for them. “We can’t just set them free into the wilderness! They’d die without us.” And while that might be true, it’s not just pets. We’ve constructed a world where most animals can no longer live independently from humans. Through domestication, deforestation, and other changes to the natural environment, we’ve completely seized this world, making animals depend on our support and very random benevolence to survive.

Think about this for a second: we’ve essentially removed any other viable option for them besides ownership, some other form of close captivity, or preservation in protected areas. So yes, living closely with us might be the best option for their longtime safety and survival—but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an ethical solution. Just because we’ve left animals with virtually no other choice doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to critically assess what kind of life we’re offering to them and whether it’s truly in their best interest.

A lot of people might still feel tempted to toss this off as ‘go vegan’ or pro-PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) propaganda, so I’ll interject by clarifying that I have owned pets before and don’t oppose the idea of keeping them as companion animals altogether.

But the lack of care and consideration that can commonly be found in pet ownership, or the large-scale industrialisation of it are not things I stand for nor support. Which brings us to the pet shops. Pet shops often acquire most of the pets they sell from the infamous puppy, kitten, or bunny mills. The terms refer to places that have specialised in the mass production of animals. There they’re usually auctioned off to the highest bidder or killed if unsellable for some reason.

The chosen animals are typically taken from their mothers at an early age, packed into crates, loaded onto a truck or plane and shipped hundreds of miles to dealers and pet stores, often travelling for days without sufficient food, water or ventilation.

Then there are the issues we’d call attitudinal. In buying and selling animals, we’re treating them as objects instead of living beings with inherent value. When an animal is a product, it becomes difficult for us to appreciate the experiential world of the animal from its own perspective and understand how keeping them as pets makes them feel.

So after all of this, there isn’t much left to acknowledge besides the fact that the way we operate pet ownership has become fundamentally unethical. That being said, it doesn’t have to be. There could be versions of human-animal relationships that don’t see them as commodities, don’t involve complete captivity, and don’t cause suffering, so let’s find ways to install them.