It's a dog's life if you can't chase rabbits

According to America's new pet liberation front, animal ownership is little more than slavery. Paula Weideger talks to the activists who want equal rights for all domestic companions

The epidemic of political correctness has infected even our relationship with pets. In New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and points in between, men and women are claiming that pets are slaves. The word "pet" is out; "animal companion" - or "companion animal" - is now de rigueur.

"Ownership engenders exploitation," says Joy Nolan, an animal rights activist in her twenties attending a recent conference on the issue in New York. It is a comment which may irk those who have spent hundreds of pounds on a pedigree cat which deigns to come and sit on your lap only when it feels like it. Owning an animal has become so shameful to some that they will adopt any language to justify it.

One Boston woman refers to her bunny-in-residence as the "rabbit who happens to share my house". We are asked to believe that Flopsy hopped in one morning, opened the refrigerator and, liking the look of the carrots and lettuce inside, elected to stay.

Unless we can convince ourselves that our pets are equal partners in our domestic arrangements, we are apparently no better than those who profited from the slave trade. Ms Nolan is not alone in asserting that, despite laws to the contrary, animals shouldn't be considered property. "We didn't accept women being property, or black people," she says.

No matter that plenty of cats, dogs and birdies go out into the world day after day and return home, quite voluntarily, to the humans who love them. The "pets are slaves" campaigners would counter that these pets are suffering from victim neurosis, like battered wives who keep going back to their husbands for more abuse.

"People are selfish to have pets under the guise of loving them," says fellow activist Jason Shaw bluntly. "You can't turn a domesticated dog back into the wild."

There is, of course, a big difference between animals such as dogs and cats, which have evolved into domesticated creatures over thousands of years, and wild creatures like bears, which men capture and tame. But before I can bring this up for discussion, Jason's girlfriend interjects.

"I object to forcing the animal into something that it's not!" she blurts emotionally. "Doing your own thing," is, she says, one of the rights of the liberated pet. Dogs "should be allowed to kill other creatures if that's what they want to do". What's more, she adds, you shouldn't keep the dog locked in the house in order to prevent it from running into the road. Nor should you train your dog to ignore chickens and deer; this is another example of a cruel, tyrannical pet-owner denying his or her pet its rights. It's OK for animals to be cruel to each other. It's not OK for humans to get involved.

Yet parents take comparable preventive measures all the time in order to protect toddlers and young children. It follows, I suggest, that parents are barbaric because they limit their children's physical liberty. (Since animal liberationists, along with doting dog-owners who paint the nails of their adored lapdogs, have a habit of mixing up pets and humans, I thought this comment might send a ripple of confusion among the ranks.) It did not.

"Children are different," says one campaigner, with no trace of irony. "If left to themselves, they stay in the house."

Passion, not reason, is what rules the campaign to liberate pets. Take, for example, Melinda Du Val.

"If we could eliminate domestic animals," Ms Du Val explains, "people's attitudes toward them would be forced to change." I'll say. There wouldn't be any pets to have an attitude about. This brings us to a matter that's far more worrying than the absence of logic among the "pets are slaves" contingent.

"I love the companionship of my cats," Ms Du Val assures me. "They are my friends. I treat them with respect. But I am in favour of eliminating all domestic cats and dogs because too many people mistreat them."

Do not be comforted by thinking that Ms Du Val is some isolated crackpot. Numerous perfectly sane, otherwise level-headed members of the community equate "petocide" with animal liberation. In the name of being humane, they assert, all pets have to go.

This is the plan: close every pet shop; ban the breeding of pets; change the laws so that animals are no longer property, and neuter all pets. This goes for the chihuahua and the wolf, the tiger and the Burmese, rabbits in hutches and guinea pigs in cages.

Well, my dog can keep the one ball he's got. I'm no animal exploiter and I can prove it. I can't tell you how many people have called out as we head towards the park: "Who's taking who for a walk?"