Importance of Pets in a Client’s Life

Many times on this blog, I have discussed estate planning for pet owners.  In Natalie Angier, The Ambivalent Bond With a Ball of Fur, NY Times, Oct. 2, 2007, the author explains her own feelings as she coped with the death of Cleo, her pet cat.  She also explains that:

Pets are growing ever more popular. In 1988, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, 56 percent of American households had a pet. By 2006, that figure had climbed to 63 percent, which works out to a national census of 88 million owned cats, 75 million dogs, 16 million birds, 14 million horses, 142 million fish, assorted small mammals and the occasional leopard or Madagascan hissing cockroach.

We love our pets and we love the idea of pets, of reaching beyond the parochial barriers of the human race to commune with other species. * * *

So we adore our pets and lavish time and money on them. Annual pet expenditures in this country have doubled in the last decade and are now more than $40 billion a year. And then we scold ourselves for our foolish fiscal priorities. * * *

I understand the ambivalence of the human-animal bond. I loved my cats, and I miss them, but I resent them, too, for showing me what a creature of small habits I am, and for reminding me that even love is not enough.