Family Pets, Animal Welfare, and Catholic Teaching

Given the vital human importance of most of the subjects addressed on the Mirror of Justice — human flourishing in communities, war and treatment of captured combatants, the sanctity of life of the unborn, etc. — a posting about the fate of a family pet seems, well, trivial. As another poignant example of the inestimable worth of human thriving, we at the University of St. Thomas law school have been joining together in prayerful intercession, including a prayer service in the chapel when the new semester begins this coming Monday, on behalf of third-year law student Alisa Huttes, a beloved and valued member of our community, who is struggling (with hopeful signs of progress) to overcome grievous injuries inflicted in a New Year’s Eve car accident (her story and regular updates may be found at her Caring Bridge website). In light of all this, my family’s sadness about the serious illness of our cat must be placed in perspective and understood as having much diminished magnitude and moral significance.

But that doesn’t mean Simba’s situation is completely insignificant and entirely lacking in moral dimension or that the practical problem facing we Sisks as a family in making a decision about his future welfare can be avoided. Reading the recent posting here that cross-referenced a story about Pope Benedict’s heart for and personal care of stray and sometimes injured cats that wander into the Vatican, together with discussions in the past couple of days with colleagues about whether Catholic moral reasoning as applied to such a situation (which of course must be faced again and again by every family with a pet) emboldens me to post some musings about this subject.

Every pet-lover can bend your ear with stories about just how remarkable is their animal companion, going on and on, heedless of the state of boredom into which the kind listener is placed. Now, dear readers, it is your turn to be so afflicted. Simba is an orange (not really “yellow”, but “orange”) tabby cat, with seven toes on each foot, giving him nearly opposable thumbs on his forepaws. He was the neighborhood wanderer in our former home near Des Moines, Iowa, regularly being spotted miles away, running across many a busy street, and even strolling through the aisles of the local grocery store. The combined traits of being prone to roam and being unusually affectionate to every stranger should have used up his “seven lives” in short order. But Simba also had a wiliness about him that somehow kept him from serious harm. Around six years ago, Simba decided he wanted a new home at our house down the street from his original dwelling. I resisted with progressively less vigor, as I am allergic to cats. But Simba seemed to know which of us needed to be persuaded and thus he persistently bypassed the other members of our family with an unerring focus to jump up on my lap. He won me over in a big way, his original owners down the block were happy he had found a new home (as he had become restless at their house, not being overly enamored with their little dogs), and he became a member of our family.

Beginning around Christmas, Simba started to lose his feisty character, still appreciating love and attention but less likely to seek it out and preferring to find a hidey-hole somewhere. Then he started to lose weight dramatically, dropping from 12 to less than 9 pounds very quickly. Two trips to the veterinarian confirmed what I had feared. Simba has cancer, specifically lymphoma of the intestinal area to be precise (which is a very common end-stage condition for cats).

What then to do? Giving Simba a steroid tablet twice a day is inexpensive and simple (other than the adventure of having to force a cat’s mouth open to take a pill), but the improvement in health will be very temporary, likely affording him only a few weeks. Cats do respond well to chemotherapy and do not suffer the debilitating effects that accompany such a treatment for humans (see here). But even chemotherapy is relatively temporary in effect, generally extending a good quality of life for a cat by a few months. And it is rather expensive (thousands of dollars). Which then raises the moral, as well as practical, question: what to do?

The Catholic Church calls upon the faithful to treat animals with “kindness” (see Catechism ¶¶ 2416, 2457). The Catechism reminds us of “the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals” (Catechism ¶ 2416, a practice we see continued today in the Pope’s kindness toward stray cats at the Vatican. But we certainly may not regard animals as having anything approaching the same moral standing as human beings.

I do love Simba very much, and I sincerely believe he loves me as well. But my love for him is based not only on what I see as his unique personality for a cat, but also undoubtedly reflects a certain projection of my human nature toward him. By contrast, his love is limited by his nature as a cat, a nature he obviously cannot escape. I (and every other human being) was created in the image of God. A cat was not. (See Genesis 2:19-20; Catechism ¶ 2417.) Thus, while I of course would not hesitate to expend many, many thousands of dollars for medical treatment of a human family member, even if the prognosis was only fair and life expectancy was measured in months, I am troubled by the moral justification for doing the same for an animal.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church appears to speak rather directly to this situation and to the feelings I have expressed above:

It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or due needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons (Catechism ¶ 2418).

To be sure, I could justify this expenditure on chemotherapy as based not only on kindness for Simba but as not detracting from my charitable contributions for the benefit of humanity, through the mechanism of posing to the family that the choice is one between going on a summer vacation or providing chemotherapy to the cat. But is that not merely an exercise in sophistry? Would the net result still not be, at some level, a shifting of substantial resources from something directed to humanity to that of non-eternal creation? So why, then, do I feel as though I am betraying a member of the family by leaning against further treatment for Simba? Is this another example of how dangerous is the modern trend of making moral decisions based upon inherently flawed personal experiences and passionate emotions rather than on the deposit of faith to be found in the body of teachings of the Church? (And to prey upon your emotions, I post here a photo of Simba.)

Greg Sisk