Turning Pets into People

The Earl of Cranbrook feeds his pet bats on a special mixture of egg yolk, cream cheese and banana. He says, "I keep the bats for about three months, then let them go." When the late Jayne Mansfield tried to smuggle her two Chihuahuas into England, she won the sympathy of the pet-fancying British public by clutching the animals to her celebrated chest and proclaiming, "They appeal to my mother instinct." Ronald Reagan, finding that he was getting on badly with his mongrel, put himself and the dog through a $250 course of psychotherapy at a Beverly Hills ca nine funny farm.

Such incidents abound, lively as rab bits, in Fetishism: Pets and Their People in the Western World (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; $5.95). Author Kath leen Szasz tells of the great Dane that came to its owner's wedding in top hat and, of course, tails; of the New York City dog whose owner listed him in the phone book, "in case his friends want ed to telephone him"; of the pair of Saint Bernards that follow their master everywhere -- in their own chauffeured station wagon. But there is little glee in the telling. Author Szasz, 56, a Hungarian-born translator of novels, is in tent on drawing a stern conclusion --that a growing pack of petishists have come to treat their pets not as animals but as little furry people.

A Pint for the Puma. Unleashing twelve months of research, Mrs. Szasz concedes that pets can provide educational insights into nature. She details the successful efforts of therapists who use pets in diagnosing and treat ing mentally disturbed children. But man has become neurotic, she contends, when owners take pet alligators for drives, buy hairpieces for dogs and lacetrimmed nightgowns for cats, give the puma a pint of beer as a nightcap, and make unnecessary gourmet viands the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. petfood market. Some owners bury their canaries and pooches under massive marble tombstones in special cemeteries. Only last week, an Italian court ruled that a wife was justified in leaving her husband because he regularly shared his bedroom with 30 cats and six dogs while forcing her to sleep in another room.

Fetishists' motives are sad, most of them induced by the fact that pets seldom fight back. Mrs. Szasz describes parents guilt-ridden about mistreating their own children. They may try to make up for their failings by smothering their pets with love that would drive any person away. Other animal nuts are merely attempting to buy love. For still others, she quotes Sidney Jourard, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida, who suspects that in an uptight society, "the dog patter, the cat stroker, is seeking the contact that is conspicuously lacking in his adult life." "Homoneuroticus," says Mrs. Szasz, "de-animalizes his pets in exactly the same way he de-humanizes himself."

What does Mrs. Szasz propose to do? She repeats an ancient plea that man should love his fellow men first, then animals. Viewed properly, they can teach him some valuable lessons. She tells of the father who found his four-year-old son whipping his puppy dog with a belt and shouting, "I'll make a man of you yet, you sniveling little bastard." The father, notes Mrs. Szasz, quickly modified his educational methods.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.