That I’m cruel and insensitive because I hate dogs, cold because I ignore the kitten videos my friends share with me. They don’t know the almost divine fear that the guardian cats of ancient temples inspire in me, that mystical encounter with the feline heir to the ruins of Hadrian’s library in Athens, that Mexican cat of onyx and lapis lazuli that haunts my nights. I admire cats (from afar), deities whose eyes guard the sublime power of their lineage, but I don’t want (it offends us both) their vulgar hairs to colonize my common furniture, my clothes and my food.

The number of households with pets is higher than the total number of minors under 12 years of age, the latest census shows

I don’t even like dogs in painting, and there are plenty of their snouts among artists. The exhibition I visited in Dresden dealt with the role of pets in our lives. Of course, he had a lot to say about the dogs who posed with their masters in several famous pictures. The European aristocracy did not miss the opportunity to have their portraits taken with their creatures whose lives in the palace became the envy and ideal of their subjects. Centuries later, nothing has changed: corgis for English royalty, chihuahuas like Paris Hilton, terriers like William Faulkner for sophisticates, adoptable rune dogs for altruists.

They say that God raises them up and they gather. Okay: those weirdos are just my best friends.

Before my kind readers who are friends of furry creatures resent my cynicism, I will admit that I know (secondhand) the love, companionship, devotion, healing that they bring to their lives. The aforementioned exhibition analyzed the phenomenon of the industrial revolution and the alienation it caused in the peasant masses who, literally exiled, crowded into the cities, subconsciously regretting the disconnection with nature. Having amputated the umbilical cord that connected us to plants, animals, solar and lunar cycles, we became neurotic. A German doctor named Schreber recognized the need to get one’s nails dirty, to plant and feel the creative power of nature: the European system of urban gardens was born from his doctrine. But before doctors understood the phenomenon, city dwellers were already self-medicating with pets and solitary plants in mud prisons.

4.1 million households across the country have at least one pet: what might the ecological footprint of our domestic animals be?

The literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries gives voice to that anxiety born from the loss of the human connection with nature to which we belong. The monkey stories of ETA Hoffmann, Franz Kafka and Leopold Lugones testify to this orphanage. I am fascinated and horrified by that abyss, but above all I am interested in the strange ways of filling it. Although great authors tell brilliant stories about ladies and dogs, we small authors content ourselves with disturbing anecdotes: the story, for example, of a woman from Ecuador in Japan who a few months ago adopted a praying mantis as a pet: a praying mantis, marvelous, so It’s incredible that not just so I don’t ignore his videos but watch and review them: Mantis eats yogurt, banana and crickets; skin change photographed next to his exoskeleton; Mantises with black eyes, aliens, play with their owners, move as if acting in a science fiction movie. They say that God raises them up and they gather. Okay: those weirdos are just my best friends. (OR)