{"id":81,"date":"2022-09-26T11:08:29","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T15:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/?p=81"},"modified":"2022-09-26T11:08:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T15:08:29","slug":"poopy-pets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/2022\/09\/26\/poopy-pets\/","title":{"rendered":"Poopy Pets"},"content":{"rendered":"

My family has had pets my whole life. We\u2019ve had rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, hamsters, rats, and a cat, and with that comes an awful lot of shit. When you have pets, especially ones living in your house, their waste needs to be dealt with. I find the difference between the way we deal with animal waste and human waste interesting. When dealing with animal poop, we usually have to be relatively hands-on, it can\u2019t really be avoided due to the systems and routines that have been established, whereas, with human waste, it\u2019s immediately removed from sight, requiring very little interaction on our part.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a couple of thoughts as to why it\u2019s like this. My first thought is that animal poop (some kinds more than others), is less offensive to our senses. It\u2019s usually smaller, less smelly, and in the case of some animals, visually different. I know I personally have a smaller reaction to changing a rabbit litter box than a cat litter box, perhaps because rabbit poop looks and smells so different from our own, while cat poop looks and smells more similar. I think this could also be somewhat related to the shame associated with our own shit. When we have to deal with animal poop, it\u2019s distanced from us, and we aren\u2019t the ones responsible for its existence, so there isn\u2019t that feeling of shame and discomfort.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another potential reason for the difference in how we handle animal waste is that it is an established thing, much like the shame associated with our own waste, so it feels normal to be grossed out by handling our own shit, but when it comes to scooping the cat litter or cleaning a guinea pig cage, it\u2019s relatively tolerable.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My family has had pets my whole life. We\u2019ve had rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, hamsters, rats, and a cat, and with that comes an awful lot of shit. When you have pets, especially ones living in your house, their waste needs to be dealt with. I find the difference between the way we deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1551,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75754],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/waste2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}