When my ex-S.O. and I were together (cohabitating with Coya) it was always "mom" and "dad" in third person-talk-to-dog.

My folks do this with their dogs, my sister does this with her dog and her fella, and frankly, most everyone I know that has pets that are inside-the-house-part-of-the-family pets does this in some form or fashion.

I've caught myself a couple of times around the new ladyfriend and her dogs doing this too, and kind of recoiled thinking "oh, did I just cross a line somehow?" But that's just my stupid brain.

Heck, I've been working with pets and their families in various iterations for 9 or so years now and have no trouble "talking" to an animal and referring to their person(s) in front of them in these terms and I can't recall anyone ever reacting in an unnatural way about it.

But I'm kind of crazy dog guy, so that may just be my experience. I can see how non-animal-people would think it odd.

Our cats know who mommy and daddy are.

We use each other's first names when talking to the cat. (We're also not parents, and I wonder if that influences things.)

The mister is Papí (poppy) and I'm mum. When talking to the cats about the dog (shut up) I refer to her as Sister-mum. I don't really know how they view her, but I think that's close. And my mum calls me Auntie-Mum when talking about me to my ex-cat (she kidnapped catnapped him from me after cat-sitting him when I moved to Seattle).

I don't have a S.O. but this got complicated when I had Bailey and Lucy. Bailey was Lucy's mother, so I was Bailey's mum, and Bailey was Lucy's mum. I didn't say I was Lucy's mum until after Bailey died.

Dear God, I truly am a crazy cat lady.

We use names.

I don't have a pet, but I totally read on.

So there.

My ex and I used the "daddy and mommy" with our dog and cats. With my new beau, she gets so excited when he comes over but I only tell her "Is that your guy? Yes? Is that your guy?" and she goes nuts. He doesn't live here, and it just feels weird if I tried to call him "daddy" to the dog.

We don't have kids, but our pets call us "Mother" and "Father". I think it's because the late cat spoke formally and with an English accent. When the dog came along, she used the same terms but says "Mudduh and Fadduh." As in:

Dog: "But Fadduh!"
Me: "Listen to your Father."
Dog: "But Mudduh, I wannnu go outsiiiiide!"
SO: "Your Mother and I don't think that's best right now."

I was set against the whole "mommy" thing at first, but the people around me kept referring to me as the dogs' "mommy" and eventually it crept into my brain. We're "mommy" and "daddy" to the pets now. We generally try to minimize any such references around other people, though...

Two of my horses were raised by the third (and the fourth, now deceased). She's "Mama Katherine" as compared to "mommy."

My parents call my cat their grandcat. I really need to give them some human grandchildren.

The other day my boyfriend called his brother's dog by the same term of endearment he calls me, and it made me inexplicably jealous.

Oh, in terms of how normal this is, our vet, who is awesome, will sometimes say in the treatment room - "Mom, can you hold her still" or something to that effect - uses Mom and Dad.

I guess we use names? Mostly I can't remember using a signifier. Like instead of saying "follow Daddy" I would say, "go on, get in the car." Maybe because my mom is a crazy dog lady whose dogs are more important than any humans in her life. So weird.

amro, that made me laugh. You are silly.

Yes. To Scooby my wife is mommy. It's perfectly normal.

Ah yes, my mum refers to my cats and dog as her grandcats and granddogger.

I guess we use names? Mostly I can't remember using a signifier.

What toastedbeagle said. I think it's because we don't have cats or dogs, but mice and sugar gliders (and my late hedgehog, Mango). They don't listen to us, so we never have to say, "Go with Mommy/Daddy!"

Rich will call me a "mouse-mommy", but to me, not when speaking to the mice. When I speak to the mice (which is all the time), the conversations go like this -

Me: Who's mice?!
Mice: (whisker twitching, sniffing around)
Me: You're mice! Who's the pretty meeces?!
Mice: (more sniffing, pooping)
Me: Youse the pretty meeces!

Oh yeah, We're mom & dad to kitties and grandma and grandpa to grand kitties. And completely unrelated cats were siblings to each other and uncles and aunts to kittens.

Now their relation to the kids is something we've never worked out, but the human kids have seniority. That was something the oldest cat had to learn the hard way.