Why are we so obsessed with our pets?

“It’s modern society; we’re alienated.”

Wrong, ancient Egyptians were just as obsessed with their pet cats. Ditto for Neanderthals, a caveman without a wooly mammoth was nothing.

“It’s the lonely who lack human contact.”

Maybe for some, but go explain the Kennedy clan? Kids hanging from chandeliers, drunken uncles donning lampshades, batshit-crazy grannies howling at the moon and 16 pets living in the JFK White House including eleven dogs, five horses, a pair of hamsters, two parakeets, a canary, a cat and a partridge in a pear tree.

I’ll tell you why we adore our pets and trust me, I’m always always right, even when I’m wrong, which like a .300 hitter in baseball, is most of the time.
 
It’s about something that goes back to the dawn of time when we were actually a part of nature. Think about it: People have always identified with animals - clan of cave bear, cult of the beaver, band of the buffalo and last and least, Joe Exotic.

We share common ancestors with our pets, namely the cynodonts, weird-looking, shrewish little varmints that looked frighteningly like my bat-faced next-door neighbor, Shirley the esthetician, who much to my chagrin, is always sunbathing on her balcony eating cheese.

We love our pets because pets are us, we are them, just not as gosh darn cute unless you're my cherubic-faced cousin, Mickey with the tousled chestnut hair and irresistible dimples. Warm-blooded vertebrates, which I’m pretty sure includes my cheesy at-faced neighbor, Shirley, simply diverged on the tree of evolution at different branches.
 
And that my friends is the only difference.