The latest issue of New York Magazine features an exhaustive exploration of the ethics of pet ownership titled “Are We All Bad Pet Parents?” The package features Madeline Leung Coleman on whether we’re forcing our pets to live too long, Mary Gaitskill on considering euthanizing her cat for bad behavior, an anonymous account of how a woman’s relationship with her cat changed after having a baby, Rebecca Alter on the city-dog math of how big of a dog you can have in your apartment, Kelly Conaboy on whether we need a word besides owner to describe our relationship to our pets, and more.
In an introduction, the editors write, “The pandemic brought more animals into our homes, often for the first time in our adult lives. And as more of us became pet owners, some of us started to wonder about the whole enterprise. Were we really equipped to care for another species, particularly in a cramped apartment? Were we depriving the animals we love of their needs, wants, and a good life? Were we receiving more than we were giving?”
New York editorial director Gazelle Emami says that the idea for the package came out of a pitch meeting in which the theme was “big tricky feelings — things you think about but perhaps are afraid to voice. The question of whether we’re bad pet parents is something a lot of people think about in their daily lives in all sorts of big and small ways, yet getting people to talk about it still feels like a third rail. The package is organized around a series of questions, driven in part by writers’ personal anxieties and fixations. The goal is to question our standards of pet ownership and what a good life means for the animal and to challenge some of the norms we take for granted around pet care.”
For the cover photo series by Charlie Engman, four actors modeled for the two-day shoot. Prosthetic-makeup artist Emily Schubert and her team spent several hours applying foam-latex molds to each “pet” before tweezing strands of hair onto the masks to transform them. New York photography director Jody Quon says, “Our idea was to anthropomorphize the animals to help readers imagine what their lives as pets might feel like.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Jonathan Chait explores what Kamala Harris’s campaign can learn from Obama, Bridget Read and James D. Walsh ask why the real-estate industry let the Alexander brothers act with impunity, and Elizabeth Weil writes about deaths from extreme heat.