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Meals and Medicare. Also genuinely devoted to their pets are such people as Glen Crank, a blue-collar worker in Hammond, Ind., whose dependents include a poodle, a pointer, a Saint Bernard (caskless), a cat, a ferret and a cougar named Rajah; to defray Rajah's $1,000 acquisition costs, say the Cranks, they had to "eat beans for months." (They have since been forced by neighborhood pressure to give Rajah to a local zoo.) The potentates of petdom may well be the 65 dogs whose meals and Medicare are assured by the will of Quaker State Oil Heiress Eleanor Ritchey; she left them $14 million and a 180-acre pad in Deerfield Park, Fla. The dogs may dwindle, but their canine capital does not: the dogs are now worth $123,278 apiece.
Gerald Durrell, the English zoologist and author (Menagerie Manor), is aghast at such man-dog relationships. Says he, "I can't stand these fubsy people who tell you, 'Oh, my dog talks.' This is anthropomorphism gone mad. I can't stand this business of people keeping Pekingese on silk cushions and feeding them creme of chicken."
What is the reason for this slavish adulation of animals?
Pets, notably dogs, cats and some birds, can, if treated sensibly, be pleasant, undemanding, entertaining consorts. During wars, insurrections and depressions, particularly, pet ownership seems to proliferate. Aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution claimed in some cases that they had lived because their dogs had repelled or mollified would-be assassins. Even in today's recession-inflation battered economy, when the care and feeding of pets would seem an exorbitant load on the family budget, there are more and more pet owners in the U.S.—deriving, perhaps, psychological sustenance from what Kipling called the dog's "love unflinching that cannot lie." Spoiled and pampered as it may be, the pet population still yields redoubtable characters and friends of man: the cat who stays up until the wee hours until his late-working owner arrives home; the dog that stands watch by a sick child or guards an empty apartment; Mimi the miniature poodle in Danbury, Conn., who in 1972 saved eight persons' lives, barking and licking at their faces when a late-night fire broke out in their home.
James Thurber was particularly eloquent in his praise of these sterling qualities. In Thurber's Dogs, he recalled his poodle: "She could take part in your gaiety and your sorrow; she trembled to your uncertainties and lifted her head at your assurances." Big animals are particularly in demand as protectors.
Among city dwellers, the popularity of Doberman pinschers, Saint Bernards and German shepherds—even wildcats —has risen in proportion to the incidence of muggings and burglaries.