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Letter: Cats and dogs aren't accessories

Published 30 December 2025

From Ingrid Newkirk People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Washington DC, US

Eddie Clutton makes excellent points in condemning “fur babyism”, which reduces a dog or cat to a toy, accessory or infant. They aren’t any of these things – they are individuals of a species different from our own, in ways that we ignore to their detriment, e.g. crating them for our convenience, flattening their faces for a “look” so they can barely breathe, declawing them to save our furniture or reprimanding them for natural behaviours (6 December, p 22).

Issue no. 3576 published 3 January 2026

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