“It is a good time to be an American dog. In the 1970s, as many as 20 million dogs and cats were euthanized each year. That number has declined precipitously. The ASPCA now estimates 390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats are euthanized each year, down from 2.6 million as recently as 2011.”
pets
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Dog’s Inner Life: What a Robot Pet Taught Me About Consciousness
“The creators of the Aibo robot dog say it has ‘real emotions and instinct’. This may seem over the top, but is it? In today’s AI universe, all the eternal questions have become engineering problems.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Cats and Dogs Who Eat Cats and Dogs
“Pets, like humans, don’t expect the call of the wild to arrive in their faces.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Life and Death with a No-Good, Grumpy Dog
“The other thing people say when a pet dies is, ‘She had a good life.’ But did she?” Shay Castle pens a moving obituary for her dog, Sydney.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Rabbit Outbreak
“As RHDV2 is poised to become endemic in the United States, the vaccine, which is the one thing that might stop it, is now caught up in the contradictions of rabbits.” The latest New Yorker feature from Susan Orlean tracks a highly contagious, deadly virus among rabbits.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Woman’s Work: Becoming a Home of One’s Own
Carolita Johnson considers what it takes to recover from grief, build strength for the future, and become one’s own center of gravity again.
Posted inReading List
I Will Outlive My Cat: A Reading List on Pet Death
Alison Fishburn shares seven longreads on how humans experience the death of their pets.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
How to Predict the Unpredictable
After the death of her dog, Katie Gutierrez grapples with the ripple effects of her decisions — and how to live with uncertainty as a mother.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Year of the Cat
A personal essay in which Elisabeth Donnelly looks back at a relationship with a wily cat during a lonely time in upstate New York.