Did your SUV just wag its tail? On balance would you say your air conditioner is happy? Your pool; content or battling a mid-life crisis? These questions and more, answered on tonight's edition of I Can't Believe Wellington Has So Many Universities and Yet Produces So Little.

Having said that, having a carnivore as a companion animal is carbon unfriendly. So. Either don't eat any meat yourself (works for me), or just let the thing loose to fend for itself. My buddy survives on a diet of moths and weeds, supplemented only by whatever scraps of chicken necks, pigs' feet, roo steak, etc that happen to blow into the yard.

Seriously, while I'm sure some animals are raised for pet food (one of the horrible things about capitalism that we don't like to think about), the assumption here that pets are eating food grown especially for them seems a little unlikely to me.

My pet is so green, he's transparent. He exists in my mind, and since he is an imaginary pet, I normally have him munch on pine straw in my back yard, which we have in abundance. For waste, he produces tofu and rolled oats, his urine a tasty IPA. When he sheds (which he rarely does), I am able to produce yarn that is close in texture to Alpaca wool. He is loyal and true, and I polish his horn with rainbow spit every few weeks just to keep him looking tip top. Good old Sparky.

If you really loved the planet you'd just kill yourself, because you're not good for it.

This is on top of the list of Shit I Can't Be Bothered To Worry About.

Oh, all right. Well, that solves dinner for tonight then.

What a bunch of buzz killingtons in that study. I try to practice of leaving as little footprint on the planet as possible and that includes my kitties. I drive a fuel efficient car. I conserve what I can. I recycle what I can. So if Peanut and the Doodlebug are the equivalent of a VW Golf or two so be it. When we get to the point where were the pets are a bigger problem than the people, then I'll worry about this.

FWIW, there are things that you can do to negate this. Feed a raw diet from locally sourced meat. Find kibble that uses sustainably raised animals. (I like Orijen). There's no reason to not have a dog or cat, you just need to not feed crappy food that is the animal equivalent of McDonald's.

Jeez, I have two dogs and two cats. I am singlehandedly responsible for global warming.

My bunny eats the veggies I don't and pees on recycled newspaper, so I think he's like the Al Gore of pets.