The other day I shared this recent photo of Honey and Caine with my sister and she asked, “What are they hunting?” I thought about answering “They’re just playing” (which is of course what humans do when they “hunt” nowadays). They aren’t doing it to survive. Both human hunters and pets can go back to their cozy homes or shacks and eat their fill, while natural predators have to hunt or starve.

People have corrupted the word “hunt” just like they perverted “stalk.” (Except Euell Gibbons, who used it jokingly in his book title, Stalking the Wild Asparagus. But then he used to think pine trees were edible.)

How anyone can still subscribe to the agenda-driven assertion that non-human animals don’t experience life every bit as—if not more—richly as our species, is beyond me. All of the other animals we share the world with—dogs, cats, pigs, cows, horses, rabbits, parrots, pigeons, turkeys, turtles, deer, elk, mink, salmon, or moose–have each evolved the wits and sensations needed to survive, or they surely wouldn’t be with us now.

Regardless of what you believe about whether animals should have rights, we humans don’t have the right to make them suffer. Any attentive dog owner knows that their best friend can go through a full spectrum of emotions, from fear and sorrow to love and joy—on any given day.

(And Caine says, “Yeah, and that goes for cats too.”)