PASSIONATE RATIONS

The on-going pet-food scare has brought back a memory.

I once dated someone who was convinced that pet food was being bought in the largest numbers not by America’s pet owners, but rather by America’s poor.

When I heard this theory, I immediately thought, “What am I doing with this person?”

But then the basis of the belief was explained to me:  just look at pet food ads on television and in magazines.  The food is put on crystal plates, cut with silver utensils, placed side-by-side with tantalizing portions of the human-food ingredients purported to be in the pet food.  The message is very up-scale; who wouldn’t want that?  And, when you can’t afford to eat or feed your family, such messages must be all the more influential.   Paying more attention, I began to wonder.

Of course, I don’t know very many dogs with trust funds or kitties with caches of cash.  The purchasers of the food are human, so marketers naturally would want to appeal to those with the money.  Ultimately, this is what I settled on as the explanation.

But Fancy Feast commercials still give me the creeps.