6 Great Products For Making Your Pet Hate You
#3. Tattoos
Not every pet has fur to dye. This presents a challenge to certain pet owners, who know they can't just settle for boring old animal clothing to suit their pet pimping needs. Fortunately, enterprising souls in Russia solved that dilemma in the most ridiculous way possible.
Via Lovebodyart.com
We're going to go ahead and just blame this on Chernobyl.
That is not paint, nor is it a henna tattoo. That is an adult Sphinx cat with a chest tat bigger than its own head. Proportionally, it's bigger than what you're likely to see in most biker bars, and it's far from an isolated incident.
Via Farm animals and larger pets -- mainly dogs -- have been given identification tats for ages. But those are usually done with this little plier-like apparatus:
Via Prodgoz.com
... while decorative tattoos use the same two-coil tattoo machines used on 300 lb. bikers.
Via Wikimedia Commons
"Heeere, kitty, kitty ..."
If you've ever gotten a tattoo, you know that when it's in action, that thing is a buzzing, prickling horror that can make a grown man cry long before he realizes how fast he'll grow out of his Grateful Dead phase. Of course, that's not really a fair comparison since the percentage of your cat's body that's having ink permanently stabbed into it is far greater than anything you, or most bikers, would be able to handle.
Via Tucsoncitizen.com
He's caught between running away and biting her jugular.
It's not surprising that a large colored piece can hurt well after the animal wakes up. Giving your pet a tattoo that big is basically like subjecting it to major surgery, complete with the aches and itching of the healing process. Oh, and they also use the same potentially allergy inducing inks your vet doesn't want you putting in their hair, because of how sensitive animal skin can be. But surely it'll be OK when stabbed under its skin.
The tattoo fad goes beyond cats and dogs, though. Look no further than New York for tattooed goldfish of all things, imported straight from Singapore.
Via Underwatertimes.com
Wait, what? ... How do you even? ... What?
The fish have been tattooed with simple designs using that same human tattoo gun, which is the rough size equivalent of a human getting tattooed with a harpoon.
Businesses have noticed the pet tattoo trend and are trying like hell to make it profitable in one way or another. There is, in fact, an actual payday loan company right here in the U.S.A. that offers its loans with an inbuilt stipulation to shave parts of your pet and tattoo it with the company logo of their choice.
#2. Messing With Their Senses
We can take their dignity, but the one thing our pets will always have on us are their keen animal senses. Fortunately, the senses are mostly invisible verbs, so there's no clear way for pet owners to dye them hot pink and pack them full of plastic testicles. Doesn't matter. We've found a way to mess with them.
Via Geeksaresexy.net and integratedpets
Take for instance the dog's superpowered sense of smell. The reason dogs sniff around so much when we take them on walks is that their sense of smell can detect who was doing what in these parts over the course of weeks. Unlike any of our senses, a dog's nose lets it sense across time. Imagine how badass it would be if you could hear stuff echoing around your neighborhood days after it happened.
Now imagine if you could do that, but were forced to carry around a giant boombox all the time because your deaf caretakers didn't like the sounds you made. Now you know how dogs must feel when we make them wear dog perfume. Despite the aggressive stupidity of that concept, there are many, many varieties of dog perfume, including one that people are apparently willing to pay $60 for called "Sexy Beast," to a large variety of $6 dog perfumes that are probably just left over Drakar Noir from the early '90s. There appears to be a thriving industry in making sure our pets smell like a middle school dance while robbing them of the one thing they do better than us.
Via Petsugar.com
$44, and it smells like baby powder. Christ.
Dogs and cats are pretty tactile creatures, so if you want to pretty much render them oblivious to the world around them, you can give them the full Sex and the City treatment: outfit it with pet shoes to go with its perfume. Pet shoes are exactly what it says on the box: tiny little dog ballerina slippers some people make their dogs wear so they don't mess up the floor after those pesky "walks." Just look at this video to see how much the dogs love that shit:
Haha! His only sense of firm ground under his paws is robbed from him, and he's running like an idiot. Next let's blindfold the kids and make them run around in the backyard!
#1. Piercings
Via At first glance, piercings on pets seem kind of stupid, but by no means as bad as some of the other stuff out there. After all, everyone's seen those plastic earmark things on cattle, and they don't seem the worse for wear. Then you take a second glance, and the madness unfolds.
Via Holy Taco
Both of these people need to be in protective custody.
See, unlike most other items on this list, this is something there are absolutely no professionals for. The few that have tried to offer pro pet piercing services have (understandably) been browbeaten to oblivion. Pet piercers are a DIY community, and holy shit there seems to be a lot of them. Since they appear to be naturally ashamed, no actual figures on the amount of hobbyists exist, but the world's largest online body modification community BMEzine used to maintain huge gallery of "modified" pets. BMEzine.com, a site dedicated to bragging about drilling holes in your body, was pretty uncomfortable with pet piercing, and have since taken the whole thing down. And it's not hard to see why.
Via For instance, take the dog groomer who took up manufacturing "gothic kittens" as a hobby. She did this by giving the animals multiple piercings with a 14-gauge cattle needle and tying their tails with elastic bands to stem the blood flow so the tail would fall off. Then she tried to sell them on eBay.
Via CBS News
Are people this stupid? Really?
She ended up in court and was found all kinds of guilty, and the kittens were taken to a new home.
No such luck for this poor fish whose owner gave him a lower lip stud because quote, "I was bored, and the fish was at the shop. It all started out as a joke, but it looked cool and it never affected him adversely. So I just left it in."
Via Boingboing.net
Apparently, making him the first douche bag in the history of fish wasn't considered an adverse affect.
Not to enter zoological debates with a clear professional, but how the hell does piercing a fish not affect it adversely? Lip piercing is how humans catch fish.
Pauli Poisuo is a member of the Wordplague writers community. Go say hi on their forums or take a peek at his blog.
For more on why we should be worried about animals killing us, check out 7 Terrifying Creatures You'll Never See Coming and 7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (That Are Still Around).
That poor black kitten. Cruel.
ReplySo much animal abuse in this article. F*ing rich/bored/stupid people.
ReplyI never saw the purpose of humans getting piercings and tatoos and I sure as hell don't see the purpose in animals getting them done.
ReplyAt first I saw the kitty in the spa and started to chuckle, but then about five seconds into it I was almost crying. That poor thing, how any owner could just stand there and watch as their darling kitty is tearing about in abject fear is beyond me. I almost started to cry when I had to give my kitty a bath (he got fleas, and then about a month later he jumped on the edge of the bathtub that I had sprayed fungus cleaner on.) He was so upset, and I held him and comforted him the entire time.
ReplyIf the world comes to an end in my lifetime, I can't even be mad about it. Humans are disgusting to do this kind of s**t to pets. Just because you've got a lip ring doesn't mean your pet wants one too, assholes. And that poor kitty with navel rings in its ears, he's clearly in pain. I'd like to hang that person right next to "gothic kittens" chick.
ReplyWe deserve to be wiped out.
that whole gothic kittens thing makes me want to go rescue the poor things. Just...just let pets be pets! they are not little experiments for humans to peirce and tattoo!
ReplyThis is so terrible. I can't imagine anyone being cruel enough to tattoo or pierce their pets, or dye them, or stick them in terrifying machines. And plastic surgery! My dog has huge, round eyes (my girlfriend and I lovingly call her 'marble eyes'), and even the thought that there might be someone out there who would look at her eyes and think she should get plastic surgery to change them just sickens me. People who torture their pets like this shouldn't be allowed around animals. It's all abuse. (Except for the dog shoes, because, after reading some of the other comments, I recognize that their are instances when these might be necessary.)
ReplyWhen mother nature inevitably decides she's had enough of our s**t and that it's time for us to go, I will completely understand.
ReplyAlso, how the hell could you do that to your kitty? Just stick it in a machine like that and watch it get that upset, knowing that the poor little thing trusts you not to do s**t like that to it? Maybe a dog might take something like that a little better at least, but with a cat there's not even any point. News flash; cats clean themselves without much of any help. Brush em' every once in a while and you're good. There's no reason to put them in horrible water filled torture devices.
Well, the dog shoes have a legitimate use. Mushers use them so the dogs don't cut their feet on the ice.
ReplyHow can deaf people be annoyed by sound?
ReplyWhich is the point, I guess. Compared to dogs, humans have no sense of smell.
"Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which Francois had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-out foot-gear was thrown away." If Buck could encounter a reason to wear dog shoes, then surely any dog owner can be forgiven for letting their dog do the same, even under less severe conditions.
Reply"His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man."
"softened" because it is not a useful characteristic for domestic dogs. If it's snowing out, then yeah, some dogs need snowshoes to keep the snow out from between their toes. But no, that does not justify such a jerk move to your dog.
The dog in the pet dyeing picture looks like an Arcanine
Replyf**k yeah it does. You know, dog dyeing is dumb and dangerous and makes them look stupid, but I did see a white puppy once, who had a very simple dyeing. Big, black, blocky eyebrows, to make it look like KK Slider. And I was extremely jealous. I want that dog.
Anybody who would do ANYTHING listed in this article needs to be shot until they are dead, no questions asked, no second chances. If you are this disgusting of a human being you simply do not deserve to live.
ReplyTo be fair, I have to put boots on my pug as a recommendation from my vet, otherwise his feet crack and bleed in the snow. I'm disgusted by everything else, but the boots are a necessity, and after 2 years of wearing them, he actually gets excited to put them on and will lift up his paws so I can put them on.
I'm beside myself. What the hell is wrong with people?! Besides their callous indifference to the suffering of animals who are wholly dependent upon them, that is.
ReplyThey don't see their pets as living, breathing creatures that feel pain and joy and love and fear. They're decorating them as if they were accessories that needed to be updated. Isn't there something that can be done to protect the poor animals? This is beyond awful.
Just so everyone knows... The malignant c**t who mutilated the kittens is named HOLLY CRAWFORD. She lives in Pennsylvania.. She only got 6 mos of house arrest, and I don't think that is enough...
ReplyI painted my Vizsla's nails a forest green color (he just sat there and let me) and when I took him to the vet the next week (for shots and a check up) The vet thought he had a fungus in his nails and called another vet in to look at the mysterious fungus. When I finally explained that I painted the dog's nails.. They looked at me like I was retarded and said they never saw anyone paint the nails on a bird-dog, that normal people use for hunting.. LOL.. I didnt want to paint his nails pink, so I opted for a manlier forest green to go with his red hair.
Replyour epileptic dog wears the boots when the sidewalks are salted during the winter, because if she licked any of the chemical salt off her paws, it would cause a seizure, and it's very hard to clean off completely.
Replythe boots also helped to potty train her at age 3 when i adopted her, because for some reason she did not like peeing on cement, and the boots tricked her into thinking she was standing on something more comfortable.
but people tattooing their pets should be arrested.
I painted my dogs nails once, but it was really difficult to get out of her fur. I do make her wear shoes though, because she loves playing in snow and it makes her feet really cold. The rest of that stuff is absolutely insane.
ReplyThe most we do is give our dog a jacket when it's cold outside. She appreciates it though, this stuff is just... yeah it's animal cruelty (except maybe the dying, that's just dumb and the shoes but those have a purpose).
Wow, this is ridiculous... not only completely irresponsible but pointlessly painful for your pet. Animals, creatures that love to investigate their curiosities by shoving their faces/bodies in the situation to inquire about. So lets cover them with a bunch of dangling metal so they can get stuck on s**t and rip through their skin. Real smart....
ReplyThat kept running through my mind! Both of my cats will squeeze into places where anything dangling or hanging would definitely get ripped out at some point.
Not that I'm into the whole 'make our pets as frilly as possible' thing (I think it's all really stupid, and irresponsible when it does the animal more harm than good)
Reply*Anyway* aren't dogs colour blind? I think they can only see shades of grey and red, can't they? If so, it kind of steps on the point made in #4 about your dog being seen as a white supremacist in the dog park. Unless you're dying your pet red. In which case, holy hannah... may God help your poor, poor pet.
Animals do see colours; they generally see a different range of colours, however. Didn't you read about the Pink Monkey experiment when you were in school? Scientists changed a monkey's fur colour to pink, and returned it to the cage it had been sharing with the rest of its troop.
They tore it to pieces because it was the wrong colour.
This is just all kinds of bad.
I used to roll my eyes internally a little at the dressed-up animals - the ones in fancy dress, not the ones who were wearing a layer for warmth, or dryness, or to protect their feet from the cold/winter road salt. I am now ready to cheer for costumes for animals, if it will satisfy the urge to reupholster your pet as if it were a couch. Give it a pirate outfit!
Just don't mutilate and dye it. Why do they have to suffer for their owners' vanity? Let the people turn the dye, razors, tattoos and piercings back on themselves.
dogs are dichromatic, able to see yellow and blue, they are red-green colorblind.
Monkeys are able to see the world in the same way we do, because like darwin's famous book title "You're a f*****g monkey mate" says, we are, in fact, f*****g monkeys.
Cats have a very low ratio of cones to rods, owing to their nocturnal nature, and are also red-green colorblind, being sensitive to blue and yellow.
This means, don't be a dick, use blue tennis balls when playing fetch with your dog.