Oh, because of the stronger emotions attached to animals, no question about it. By the time people get old enough to start popping out kids -- and this as much if they're fifteen and it's an accident as it is when they're thirty and it's planned -- they're beyond the point of innocence about the human race and its various tricks and turns and motives and impules. That is, they understand how people can go from malicious to golden-hearted within a fraction of a second, and then switch around again, and sometimes combine the two; and so they're wary of any new human they happen to cross paths with, no matter if that human happens to be made from their own bone and blood. So there's a kind of passivity and withholding of emotional reserves on the part of one's kids. But animals, they're all heart, all soul, no pretense or planning, and so us nerve-jangled humans tend to pour out all our essential being onto them. It's either that or the fact that pets are pre-programmed to eat bird guts before they slobber all over your face.
is my own repository of pet pix. Said I to kleenexwoman a few weeks ago, re the Internet: "Don't people know that it was designed for nothing more than illegal Simpsons sound files, cat pictures from some bored housewife out in Podunk, Iowa, and 'fR#e V_!ag@ra n0VV!!!' spam messages from Penis K. Caltech?".
Re: Definitely...
Oh, because of the stronger emotions attached to animals, no question about it. By the time people get old enough to start popping out kids -- and this as much if they're fifteen and it's an accident as it is when they're thirty and it's planned -- they're beyond the point of innocence about the human race and its various tricks and turns and motives and impules. That is, they understand how people can go from malicious to golden-hearted within a fraction of a second, and then switch around again, and sometimes combine the two; and so they're wary of any new human they happen to cross paths with, no matter if that human happens to be made from their own bone and blood. So there's a kind of passivity and withholding of emotional reserves on the part of one's kids. But animals, they're all heart, all soul, no pretense or planning, and so us nerve-jangled humans tend to pour out all our essential being onto them. It's either that or the fact that pets are pre-programmed to eat bird guts before they slobber all over your face.
Well, as long as on the subject,
http://www.geocities.com/josephwaldman/Pics/PetsPics/PetsPics.html
is my own repository of pet pix. Said I to kleenexwoman a few weeks ago, re the Internet: "Don't people know that it was designed for nothing more than illegal Simpsons sound files, cat pictures from some bored housewife out in Podunk, Iowa, and 'fR#e V_!ag@ra n0VV!!!' spam messages from Penis K. Caltech?".