What is your favorite animal?
Cats, CAts, CATs, CATS!! All of them felines!
Domestic cats are super cute, wild cats are magnificent, and they all have the attitude of gods. Who doesn’t want a god as a friend?
Cats are great, everyone knows, that’s why they rule the internet, no need to sell anyone further.
I want to talk instead about the Pet Industry and how insanely expensive it keeps getting. I particularly care now because apparently the insanity has reached the shores of my country.
The pet industry everyday finds new ways to smooch money off animal parents and lovers.
Animals clothing, housing, food, hygiene, health, entertainment, etc. All these seem reasonable and needed provisions for raising a loved animal…till you go in further.
You know there are make up items for pets now? Yeah, make up, like for women. Nails stickers 💅🏿 too.
Most animals do just well sleeping outside before they get into homes and have comfortable beds and warm rooms, but no..they need extra special temperatures and shit. Snakes are moving about everywhere as they please, including sneaking into people’s rooms and staying in there hidden for however long. But if you decide to keep that snake as a pet, you will need an expensive enclosure that needs lightening and mist and a whole lot.
Pet foods can range from any sane amount to any ridiculous amount. The latter is premium though and supposed to be healthy for your cat. Two years later, the vet that recommended it or another vet will diagnose your animal with some illness that’s going to kill them in a year, maybe they live longer if you keep them on treatment.
You’ve seen the price of automatic cat toilets? Some can pay for a whole college degree in Ghana. And the litter to put into regular plastic containers is a different cost. They have some crystalized litters, premium stuff, I always look at it, how beautiful they look and just turn around to find those dusty litters I can afford.
And cats can and do actually go to the toilet outside, cover it up all good and nice. Even when they have an expensive toilet inside.
Veterinary services are the biggest money grabbers in the pet industry. Taking advantage of people’s genuine concern and love for their pets, and extorting unnecessary amounts for zero treatments. But this is done to humans too in hospitals so I guess it’s a fair game in the medical field.
I think we should all learn animal therapy so when our pets need one, we offer the service ourselves.
Frisbees and yarn balls are still preferred entertainment of dogs and cats, but because we don’t have the time or energy for it, we have to get our fur babies hooked to the screen as well. Everyone owns a tablet, including the 3months old baby and pets.
Like everywhere else, people have been keeping pets in Ghana since the beginning of time. Usually they do help the family in someway.
Dogs were the most preferred pets, they joined hunters on a hunt and guard the house.
Cats are the not so preferred but just available pets. You let them stay because they scare mice away. But they also go and steal fish of neighbors and put you in trouble.
Till very recently, maybe the last decade, people don’t wear animals clothes in Ghana. They feed them the same food the family is eating and only call the vet for neutering or when the animal is legit dying.
And most importantly, one gets their pets for free from neighbors and family or pay very little amount as appreciation.
Animals that were/are typically sold are for rearing and consumption.
Previously if someone comes around selling a cat, it’d be a dead cat. Meat. Non-negotiable, expensive than chicken cat meat.
People did not rear cats for meat, they usually catnap other people’s cats. Now catching a cat that is not yours is no easy task, and killing one is even more risky. So while cats are easily available, cat meat; not so much. For this reason, when cat meat comes to your doorstep and you do want it, you don’t bargain at all. This is called ‘agyinamoa bo’ in Twi, meaning cat price. Even though eating of cats gets less and less common, the phrase remains to tell someone that there’s no bargaining on a product.
I got my last two cats for free from family and that’s how I will get my next cat as long as I am in Ghana.
But my brain told me to search for cats online and the shock I got at the price they were selling in Ghana here. What the..?
My mindset on paying an expensive amount for a cat is the same as the one I have on paying an insane amount to deliver a baby. If I think spending GHS 2000 on delivering a baby is too expensive, I will definitely not spend that much on a cat, granted I am not delivering the cat.
I thought there’s supposed to be a cats overpopulation issue? They are really all over the place. Why on earth should they be expensive when there’s more of them than people even care for?
All cats are dope, get a local cat for nothing or get a foreign breed with all your savings, the return will be the same. They’d love you and torment you equally, just the perfect toxic relationship you never want to get out of.
True Self 