RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD PETS
Walter Jacob
QUESTION: An elderly parent died and left, along with household items, a pet cat to which she was very much attached. His children wish to know whether they are responsible for the care of this cat, or whether they can give it away, or perhaps put it to sleep.(Laura Ellman, Kansas City , MO )
ANSWER: The prohibition against cruelty to animals goes back to biblical times and has been reinforced often in our tradition. It was permissible to use animals for work as long as they were not treated cruelly, to sacrifice them, but again in a manner that did not in any way prolong their suffering, and, of course, to consume them if the animal was slaughtered in an appropriate way and fit into the system of kashrut. Almost nothing has been said of the pets in the Jewish tradition, and so virtually all animals that were akin to our pets, such as dogs ,were used as guard or watch animals. Dogs were traditionally considered unclean, mainly through their contact with corpses(Lev. 22:4). The dog was seen primarily as a scavenger, as already shown in Exodus. Cattle that had been killed by wild animals were thrown to the dogs. Elsewhere, male pagan religious prostitutes were referred to as“dogs”(Deut. 23:18). When the Talmud wished to be derogatory about Goliath, it provided him with a genealogy in which he was called the son of a loose woman who had intercourse with dogs(Sotah 42b; Rashi and commentaries).
Only in the post-Biblical book, Tobit, were there some favorable references to a dog(5:16, 11:4). The mishnaic and talmudic