Ahmed Mayeesha Reza Agomoni
Imagine you are going on about your day and you witness a limping dog as your car whooshes past it. You struggle to turn around in an attempt to take one last look at it before your car turns right at the intersection—never to see that dog again. However, the image of the skinny and mangy dog is imprinted in your mind—leaving a lasting impression. This haunts the rest of your day and sometimes, acts as a hindrance to your productivity as well. After a day or two, you are successful in brushing it off and you continue on with your life. But, that dog is still helpless; it’s hurt and unprotected.
Cats and dogs depend on humans to tend to their needs: food, love, shelter, veterinary care, and more. Still, thousands of animals have no guardians to look after them—let alone a warm, comfortable place to curl up in at night. Left to fend for themselves on the streets, these poor animals often suffer and give in after contracting diseases; succumbing to extreme temperature changes; starving; getting run over by vehicles—and the never-ending list is outright morbid. Animal homelessness is a complex crisis and since there are so many stray animals in comparison to good homes which are willing to take them in, a lot of them have to be euthanised—a painless procedure to put the animals to rest, but often heartbreaking for the shelter homes conducting it. The number of euthanised animals could be reduced drastically if more people adopted pets instead of buying them. When one adopts a pet, you save a vulnerable animal by making them a part of your family and providing them with utmost love and care.
Even though almost everyone is educated about this issue, some people lean more towards adopting “foreign” cats or dogs over those homeless, stray ones. It is one thing to have a preference but to outright discard an entire breed just because “they are easily found on the streets” is incongruous. To some, pets are perceived as an ideal token of wealth and social status rather than companionship. Showering those “foreign” animals with pretentious accessories and other luxury items leads to an implication that nowadays exquisite pets serve as a scale to measure one’s rank in the society. Domestic breeds are just as playful and loving as your “exotic” ones. Only since there are no high price tags attached to them, it does not really fit people’s agenda of using pets as a status symbol and less of a family or companion.
When you are buying an animal, you are most definitely getting it from a breeding mill. Breeding mills are factory styled breeding facilities that put profit over the welfare of the animals. In those mills, animals are kept in shockingly poor conditions with improper medical care. They are kept in cages to breed over and over for years—with little to no possibility of ever being a part of a family, and knowing what being loved and human companionship feel like. So, buying an animal means you are giving the breeder dimes and another animal will be bred to replace the sold one—which is actually a never-ending cycle of misery.
Agomoni has a bittersweet relationship with speaking Java and convincing her parents to watch soap operas and YouTube with her.