'Pet'ty investments

Love for animals is rather good thing.  It makes us more humane!  However, very many here in Europe stretch that affection for animals a bit too far.  I've heard several young people or elderly people say about young couples: Oh, they decided to get a dog instead of start a family!  Some of them say it as a joke, some don't!

Practically everyday I come across ads in the newspaper appealing for funds for protection of animals.  But today I came across a quarter page ad for insurance of pets! Well, if cars can be insured, why not pets!  But here's a list of other things which certainly go overboard:

• A four-day automatic pet feeder (£ 35.99)
• Wood house for the dog (£119.99)... really?  At that cost one could rent a house for a large family, a family of human beings, for one full month in any part of two-third of the world!
• Cat activity tree (£ 44.99)... must be a joke!  A plaything for the cat?  Does even the cat know that it is meant for its play?  
  
• Union Jack Bow tie (£ 18.74) a tie for the dog?  That too the national flag?  Best explains 'a nation gone to the dogs!' 
• Travel water bottle to give your dog water wherever you go (£ 11.20) ...comes with the assurance that this cup sort of thing fits standard car and stroller cup holders, backpacks and bike bottle holders.  

These are only a few of the bizarre things contained in full one-page ad of a newspaper!  And I'm sure unless there is a clientele for these things, there'd neither be the ad nor the product!  From experience I can very well say, the dogs here are no more faithful or attached to their respective owners than any household dog that I've seen or raised back in India.