Human Needs, Animal Needs

Today we are expecting potential record high temperatures, after setting a record yesterday with a high of 94 degrees. Naturally enough, this is bringing out the precaution parade, and not without good cause. High temperatures can affect certain groups of people more seriously than others. Senior citizens and children are more likely to suffer ill effects of the heat, and we are advised to keep an eye on them, as well as to drink plenty of fluids and stay cool ourselves.

Such is all well and good. There is nothing wrong with the general community having basic concern for their fellow man. Yet what we cannot help but find just a little disconcerting is that, in today's Detroit Free Press anyway, right on the heels of cautions for human beings are the worries of animal advocacy groups that we should mind to keep our pets safe from the weather as well.

This is not to say that anyone should mistreat their pets, of course. But it does leave us to wonder: when we place animals on very nearly the same plain as people, being urged to worry about them very nearly as much as actual human beings, have we perhaps made an equivocation which is simply not particularly valid? Especially as the Freep article goes so far as to give specific advice on caring for pets ahead of offering similar advice on the care of people, it would seem that we are putting the animals ahead of ourselves.

That we should care for our pets is simple decency. Yet caring for people is more important and our actions and articles ought to reflect that. It is disconcerting when those groups such as journalists who presume to speak for human goodwill advise us on how to treat animals ahead of how to treat real people. We wonder how much they may actually care for us.