This didn't "seem" right to me, so I went looking. Seems like a little over 2/3 of US households have pets. (I couldn't easily find worldwide figures.)
[0] - https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-pet-stat....
I have pretty bad allergies to most pets and never grew up with them and find them. Apart from the itching and eczema, I don't really feel like I'm in a home when pets are around. For others though, I think it's the complete opposite. It must be with what we grow up with.
Totally! Having live with pets for almost my entire life, it feels “obviously” normal, but if I step back, I (and the rest of the world’s pet loving minority) are actually abnormal.
Fascinating.
We build homes to keep bad organisms (pests, thieves) out and good organisms (family, friends, babies, pets, plants) in. Species is relatively orthogonal. As long as the organism is a net value-add, in it goes.
Took about 6 months before a local cat adopted us as it's preferred owners, most likely due to the lack of another cat having claimed our yard as its territory. This new cat is the one I've referred to in a previous cat / pet related HN story.
Intellectually it seems strange to have pets: after all we build homes to keep alien species out. Yet when I met a neighbor who didn’t have a pet it seemed weird and even somewhat of a personality disorder. Which is absurd: households with pets are in the minority. But I really can’t imagine living without dogs, cats and assorted other vertebrates.