As we saw in the previous chapter, keeping dogs, cats and other companion animals fulfils a number of roles in people’s lives. Generally, companion animals contribute to the quality of the lives of their owners or keepers, and so in most cases, keeping companion animals is an activity that people find fulfilling and pleasurable. However, the fact that people keep companion animals because they enjoy doing so does not necessarily mean that they care about or prioritise the animals’ welfare. Certainly, most owners of companion animals probably think of their relationship to their animal(s) as win-win: a well cared for and thriving animal improves the owner’s quality of life. However, compromises sometimes have to be made between what is good for animal companions and what is in the interests of their owners.

For example, many owners of cats and dogs put them in boarding facilities when they go on holiday, even though they believe it would be better for their animals’ welfare if they all stayed home. In such cases, owners prioritise their need for a holiday over their animals’ welfare. Even so, most owners typically try to find out which boarding facility will look after the animals in the best way – ideally where they will be provided with enough space, and cared for by people who pay attention to their needs.

However, owners of dogs and cats can be faced with choices where they are genuinely in doubt about what is best for the animal. A number of such choices will be discussed later in this book; for example, the choice about whether or not to neuter a companion animal, or to treat a severely ill animal rather than to euthanase it (‘put it to sleep’).

In addition to areas of uncertainty, there are also disagreements about what constitutes an animal’s welfare. We will use the case of indoor versus outdoor cats as an example. Many cat owners have to choose between sometimes allowing their cat(s) to go outdoors, or keeping them indoors all the time; many people have strong views about this choice. Often these views are based on claims about what matters most from the point of view of the affected cats.

An illustrative exchange of views can be found on the website of the US animal rights organization PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Under the heading ‘Why all cats should be indoor cats’, the organization argues that for the welfare of cats, it is better never to allow them to go out and roam:

[There are] … several deadly diseases that cats who roam outdoors can catch. Unattended cats also face dangers posed by dogs, wildlife, and the scariest predator of all, humans. Thieves, or “bunchers”, cruise neighbourhoods for friendly dogs and cats who can easily be picked up and sold to dealers, who in turn sell them to laboratories. Cats are often poisoned, shot, set on fire, or trapped and drowned by intolerant neighbors or bored juveniles. They are hit by cars, accidentally poisoned by spilled antifreeze, or maimed by fan blades when they crawl into warm engines on winter days. “But he wants to go outside.” “We live on a very quiet street.” “It’s cruel to keep her in.” These are things said by people who would never dream of opening the door and sending toddlers to wander down the street on their own… Today’s concrete jungles are far too dangerous for vulnerable, trusting little animals.

(PETA, 2013)

This argument is followed by a list of things that a cat owner can do to enrich the indoor environment to keep her or his cat active and engaged without letting it out.

However, a number of readers have posted comments on PETA’s argument; some of these are highly critical about the idea that good cat welfare requires keeping cats indoors. Here are two examples:

I believe cats should be free to roam; that is one of the wonders of owning cats. I have 2 very happy healthy cats who have a great life. I don’t believe in house cats. It’s no different to keeping a rabbit in a hutch with a run in the garden – completely unnatural. That may suit the owner but not the creature. I do, though, keep them in at night so they are safe. If there is lots of traffic or you don’t have a suitable home then you should not have a cat. Let’s not go the way we have with children where people are scared to let them play in the street when in fact a child is more likely to be harmed by a family member than a stranger. (Victoria 30 January 2013 [punctuation and spelling corrected by authors])

‘Yes it is more dangerous for cats to go outdoors. Same applies to people. But we don’t lock ourselves away because the outside world is such a dangerous scary place… Cats are independent creatures.… It is cruel to keep cats indoors’. (Vicky 22 January 2013)

Thus, there can be clear disagreement between people who all seem genuinely to care about the welfare of cats. However, the two sides of the discussion cannot both be right. So, how can someone who is genuinely in doubt decide what constitutes ‘good welfare’ for cats? Can animal welfare science help?

These are the kinds of question that we will consider in this chapter. In the next section, we begin by outlining different philosophical theories about what counts as a ‘good life’. In the following section, we discuss the role of science in finding out about what is optimal welfare for companion animals.

Achieving good welfare is equivalent to having a good life. If we agree that some action or resource helps to give an animal a good life, then – assuming that it is appropriate to assist the animal in question – we have a reason to act, or to help the animal to access the resource. But how can we know what actually does contribute to giving an animal a good life – for example, whether it is good for a cat to be let out to roam?

Scientific studies may help us find out how animals are affected by the way we treat them. For example, epidemiologists can try to find out how allowing a cat to roam may affect its risk of getting certain diseases, and how this may be relevant to its survival. Behavioural scientists may study how living indoors can affect a cat’s behaviour, and whether being indoors causes behavioural disturbances or signs of frustration. But although such information would inform the discussion, the results, unless they are very extreme, are unlikely to settle the debate. For the parties engaged in the indoor/outdoor cat debate not only disagree about the likely consequences for cats, they also appear to disagree about how to define a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ life for a cat. While typical proponents of keeping cats confined indoors seem to focus on safety as a key feature of cat welfare, opponents focus on other aspects of a ‘good life’ such as freedom and naturalness. It seems that clarification is required on what, in principle, matters in a cat’s life.

Debates about what constitutes a ‘good life’ have a long history. One influential thinker here is the English lawyer and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Bentham is famous for saying that animals – like humans – matter morally because they are able to suffer. According to Bentham, the avoidance of suffering contributes to making a good life.

However, avoidance of serious pain, intense fear, depression and other forms of suffering cannot be the only thing that matters in life. If it were, the safest goal in life would be to die, painlessly, as soon as possible: suffering seems to be an unavoidable part of life, and death seems to be the only safe route to total avoidance of it. There must also be something of positive value that makes life worth living; this positive element Bentham identifies as pleasure. In this category, he collects a whole range of mental states, all of which are positive or pleasant. These states include various forms of joy, fulfilment and comfort. According to Bentham, the good life consists of getting the optimal balance between, on the one hand, pain and other forms of suffering, and on the other hand, joy and pleasure (Bentham, 1789/1989).

The theory that Bentham endorses is usually called hedonism.

The best life, according to hedonism, is one in which there are as many stimulating, comfortable and joyful experiences, and as few frustrating, unpleasant or painful experiences, as possible. The more positive experiences relative to negative ones there are (i.e. the higher the net level of positives), the better the quality of the life is.

The modern idea that we should focus on ‘animal welfare’ and its link to so-called animal welfare science is rooted in discussions about intensive farm animal production, and dates back to the 1960s. The first clear statement appeared in a report published by the British Brambell Committee (Brambell, 1965). This committee was set up by the British government following the public outcry about intensive livestock farming prompted by Ruth Harrison’s book Animal Machines, published in 1964. The recommendations of this committee formed the basis of subsequent British and European animal welfare legislation.

Previous legislation relating to animals had been so-called ‘anti-cruelty’ legislation, which only focussed on preventing people causing suffering to animals for frivolous reasons, or due to gross negligence (so-called wanton cruelty). Cruelty is still illegal, and cases involving neglect or cruelty towards dogs, cats and other companion animals make up the majority of the thousands of convictions for violations of anti-cruelty legislation made in the United Kingdom (RSPCA, 2013) and in other Western countries every year.

However, modern animal welfare legislation, in the wake of the Brambell report, also aims to protect animals from potentially adverse effects of rational attempts to make use of them, not least by increasing production efficiency (e.g. keeping laying hens confined in small cages or tethering or stalling pregnant sows). Typically, animal welfare legislation of this kind will define minimum requirements for housing and keeping animals: thus recently, in the European Union, both traditional battery cages and the confinement of pregnant sows have been banned. Some requirements to protect the welfare of companion animals have also found their way into modern, particularly European, animal welfare legislation, for example, requirements that puppies and kittens should stay with their mother for a minimum of time before being sold.

Another new development following the Brambell report was that the notion of suffering was widened to include the frustration of behavioural needs, whereas earlier, only pain was recognised as suffering. Thus, according to the Brambell report farm animals have ‘behavioural urges’, often frustrated in intensive confinement systems, which they need to perform to avoid suffering (Mench, 1998). This led to the statement of a general principle of animal welfare according to which farm animals should be free ‘to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs’ (the so-called Brambell freedoms) (Brambell, 1965: p. 13). The committee insisted that ‘suffering’ should include discomfort and stress (understood to cover a wide range of mental states including frustration and fear).

Another very influential idea found in the Brambell report was that studies based on methods from physiology and ethology are necessary elements of animal welfare assessment. This was given great weight when the report’s conclusions were implemented. By requiring agricultural reform to be underpinned by scientific evidence, the British Government, on the one hand, undertook to set up new research, and on the other, bought time before having to embark on controversial legislation.

The Brambell report and similar initiatives in other European countries set off significant investments in the scientific study of farm animal welfare; these investments have also benefitted other groups of animals, including companion animals. So, when researchers today study the welfare of dogs, cats and other companion animals, they typically stand on the shoulders of pioneering work done within the study of farm animal welfare.

However, the approach to the study of animal welfare following from the recommendations of the Brambell Committee also has two major limitations:

First, the focus was mainly on the absence of suffering; there is little mention of positive welfare. Even the central principle of the Brambell report, that animals require certain basic freedoms (later developed into the Farm Animal Welfare Council’s Five Freedoms – see Box 4.1), has generally been understood to have been violated only when the infringement of a freedom led to suffering.

So, the underlying theory of animal welfare here is a very limited version of hedonism, focussing only on absence of suffering rather than on an optimal balance between pleasure and absence of suffering. Adherents of this approach may, with some justification, argue that the reduction of suffering should be considered the priority, before turning to positive welfare, which may be considered a luxury. However, it is worth noting that allowing or encouraging animals’ positive states may provide an opportunity to reduce suffering, by enabling animals to better cope with any negative states they also face.