From the Front Page Sections, translated…
Recently, a lot of countries are suffering from the economic downturns, so is Taiwan, the decline in the import/export, caused a lot of the shops on the streets to face shutting down, and still, the pet stores aren’t at all, affected the least bit, and, instead, in the cities, an assortment of pet shops, including the grooming salons, veterinary clinics, pet hospitals, the boarding houses, the training, even, the funeral arrangement companies, they’re all, flourishing.
not my photograph…
Not only that, the instances of humans, taking their pets to the parks to walk, are even greater than the people, taking their children to play in the parks; and, as people gathered together, they’d started, talking of how they are raising their pets, and, the joys from that is way greater compare to when the humans shared their joys in childrearing practices. Once in a park, I saw people pushing along the baby strollers, I thought that the person had twins, I’d walked up, and, they were, two cute Dobermans! As we march toward the decline of birthrate, and the pop culture of having pets start to flourish, this showed, a sharp contrast.
The starting price for a cat or a dog is $10,000N.T.s, and if the animals are of a rarer variety, then, the cost may be the same as the college tuition for a semester! Looking at the pricing on the foods, and the cost it takes, to bathe your pets often, the money spent on a pet, is comparable to the amount spent, raising a child up! And still, when I’d inquired people why they’d not want to have babies instead, they’d often answered, “We can’t afford to!”
look how pampered this dog is…
What’s worse is, after the owners kept their pets for a while, realized how troublesome it was, how they’d need to clean up after the pets, take them out for walks, fearing that the pets might get too loud in the neighborhoods, and wanted to go off for a few days, but worried about the pets’ wellbeing without the owners; in the end, either that the younger generations handed their pets to the elders, or abandoned the animals, or ask online to see if anybody wants the animals! For those who are more patient, they’d kept their pets until the pets died, and, the amount of sorrows and sadness that overcome these individuals are comparable to someone who’d lost a loved one.
What’s worth noting is, that people made their pets into human-like, but they’d turned themselves into materials! The younger generations would rather spend hours on end, pay over thousands of dollars, and become a swaying light in a concert; the middle aged group works so very hard, for the sake, of being able to enjoy their own lives later on; the elderly group, buys up an assortment of health food, vitamins, to keep one health, but ended up, putting too much stresses on their bodies. And, all of these trends, it seems that people are, spending the extra time, to save up on the money, and, they’d, spent a ton of money, to save up the time, life, is filled with these inconsistencies, and, it’s all, caused by how people are, materializing themselves, and, gone with the flow of the demands to pursue the messed up value systems, and ended up, losing the cores of what they originally are!!!
and, this, would be the assortment of pets we get our picks from…
And, because this world is becoming, more, and more, and still, M-O-R-E materialistically focused, that, is why the human psyche becomes more and more emptied, in need of something to occupy us, which, is why there’s this trend of having pets, because let’s face it, sometimes, it’s just, WAY too annoying, to interact with human beings…………