Is it just me?

“Feed your pet like you feed your family,” trumpets the colorful two-page ad in this month’s Reader’s Digest. “If you consider your pets to be furry family members then a certain dog or cat food is the perfect choice.”

Made with the finest natural ingredients, this holistic pet food—[whatever that means], has high quality protein, whole grains, garden vegetables, and fruit-- [grains, vegetables and fruit? Cats are carnivores!]. This “all natural” food also has vitamins added—[hmm… that doesn't sound very natural.] And it contains no animal byproducts**

You can feed the feline members of your family “all this wholesome goodness for less than $1* a day (*more depending on their size and number, a lot more if you have 40+ cats like one family I know of. It doesn’t say how much to feed the dog…if you need to know maybe it’s too much.)

Not so long ago, if someone was said to feed their pets as well as they do their family, people would shake their heads in disgust and assume they were either abusing their family or overindulging their pet.

I was also struck by the number of ads and images in the magazine of people food that could be called “junk food”: chocolate pudding; jumbo sized candy bars; cereal made into chocolate caramel crunch; cookies; blueberry muffin flavored cereal; Bologna--maybe that's where the animal byproducts went; and not to be left out, a picture of the Democrat donkey wooing a “super voter” with a box of chocolates.

Maybe, I thought, we are feeding our pets better than we feed our families. It’s no wonder we need the products that are advertised to help with weight loss, heartburn and diabetes.

Then I saw a tiny black-and-white ad for Children Incorporated, “Third World poverty in America. Children are deprived of basic necessities right here in America. For less than $1 a day, you can change that. Your help is desperately needed.”

Yes, I think we are feeding our pets better than our family.

**“animal byproducts” according to their website are: "lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, blood and more." --[Dogs and cats would happily eat these if given the chance and so do hungry people in many places. Of course in many places hungry people happily eat dogs and cats too!]