Should public tenants be allowed to keep pets? Indeed, is there a place for captive or domesticated animals in the city at all? As a psychologist, my answer is an overwhelming yes. Animals are as precious to our urban experience as open spaces and water. To deprive less privileged Hong Kong dwellers of animal companions for hygiene reasons is like banning trees in poorer neighbourhoods because they scatter dead leaves and require expensive maintenance. Children have a particularly strong affinity to animals and contact with them often makes for some of a child's most precious memories and most lasting life lessons. But pets provide inestimable comfort to adults, too. Studies have shown that they have the capacity to lift the mood of the sick or those who are old and alone. A study in the US, for example, included hundreds of participants of both sexes. It showed that the presence of a pet mitigated the effect of stress on heart rate and blood pressure and speeded up recovery to normal levels. Pets can even have beneficial effects in ways that family members cannot. Both pet owners and non-owners showed the highest levels of cardiovascular reaction to stress in the presence of their spouses. Researchers believe this is because a pet offers judgment-free support. With a spouse, however, there is always a degree of expectation and evaluation. But what about the animals themselves? Is it fair to confine them to a cramped urban existence? Don't the animals in the zoo at the botanical gardens show us they are unhappy with their pacing and repetitive head swaying? Aren't dogs in small apartments bound to be unhappy? That may be the case. But zoologists say this view is mostly the result of anthropomorphisation - the tendency to attribute to animals thinking and feelings that are characteristically human. Animal behaviour is tied more directly to the basic instinct to survive. There is no evidence that animals behave in the way humans do when they are depressed (in the unlikely case that they are capable of anything remotely comparable to human depression). And even if they did, depressed people are not particularly prone to pacing or swaying. Indeed, swaying and pacing is just as likely to indicate something positive, like being rocked to sleep or ritual dancing. Rhythmic movements in animals could simply be compensation for the sorts of activity required for survival in the wild. A less colourful expression of that particular part of their nature, perhaps, but arguably an acceptable trade-off for the exceptional health and longevity animals in captivity enjoy. Is it any more maladaptive than 100 former hunter-gatherers sitting down to watch a horror movie in the dark? Few lose sleep about the plight of rats and cockroaches, probably because they are less anthropomorphically attractive than golden retrievers. Hygiene is their constant enemy. They live in the city, too. And they are free. But would anyone argue that they are better off than the well-fed Pekinese? Cats and dogs are more evolved than rats. So when their superior capacities and circumstances presented them with the choice, zoologists suggest, they actually chose domestication. Natural selection seems to have favoured the ancestors of our domestic cats and dogs because they dared to give up their wild ways and be tamed - to benefit from the ready source of food and safety from predators. Living in a small apartment may not be ideal for a large dog. But animal lovers have to be realistic about the options available. Many would have died out altogether if limited to the outdoor work for which man originally bred them. Public housing is for relatively disadvantaged Hongkongers. These residents do not bring home pets to decrease hygiene standards on their estate, but in an attempt to bring joy and affection into their lives. Some may welcome the opportunity to get rid of an animal that is an unwanted gift, purchase or adoption. The least the authorities can do is see that these animals are treated humanely. But attacking the problem by enforcing a pet ban on reluctant public tenants represents a blow to the quality of life of those in the community least equipped to defend themselves. It is sheer cruelty, not to mention bad public policy, to deprive a disfavoured family or a person living alone in a small apartment of such a proven psychological buffer. It is exactly such individuals who are most vulnerable to the stresses that pets can help offset. Jean Nicol is a Hong Kong-based psychologist and writer everydaypsychologist@yahoo.com
