20 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | PETS
Qsaltlake.com |
Issue 328 | OCTOBER, 2021
SOME OTHER INTERESTING COMPARISONS:
issue To many LGBTQ people, our pets ARE our kids — even those who have kids. Each year we take an issue to celebrate our fuzzy/feathery/scaley friends.
Do lesbians really love cats? According to the 2018 Autostraddle Lesbian Stereotypes Survey in part answered the questin “is it true that lesbians love cats?” It turns out, it’s … mostly true. Despite 26 percent of Europeans and 12 percent of Americans being allergic to cats, queer women and non-binary people continue obtaining, raising, and loving cats with absolute abandon, at relatively significant rates. Conversely, despite the general excellence exhibited by dogs throughout human history and the superiority embodied by my dog Carol specifically, queer women and non-binary people are not more likely to own dogs than your average everyday heterosexual Jo. (jk there are no heterosexual Jos).
OVERALL PET OWNERSHIP Before we get too deep into this important news, let us first declare that we are
also a little bit more likely to own pets in general. 68.6 percent of U.S. residents on our survey said they own at least one pet, compared to 62 percent of all Americans (according to a 2015 Harris Poll that surveyed 2,205 U.S. adults), but it’s worth noting that our survey group skews young, which is not an inherent characteristic of a queer group, and young people are apparently more likely to own pets. 65 percent of millennials own pets, according to that same Harris Poll, whereas 66 percent of our 18-to-34 group does. They found 71 percent of Gen X-ers owning pets, compared to 76 percent of our 35-to-44-year-olds. So age did indeed give us an edge, but we’re still doing a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves. However, most of our lift takes place in the realm of… cats.
We’re Switching It Up On Crossover Ownership: In the Autostraddle survey, 30 percent of U.S. cat owners have dogs, and 37 percent of dog owners also have cats. In the Harris poll, 49 percent of cat owners have dogs and 34 percent of dog owners also have a cat. More Kids = More Pets: In the Harris poll, 73 percent of Americans with kids in their household had at least one pet, compared to 57 percent of those without. On ours, 79 percent of kid-households had at least one pet — and so do 67.6 percent of those without. So, childless queer folks are significantly more likely than childless straights to have pets. In fact, a full 71 percent of survey-takers who don’t want to ever have kids have pets, because who needs babies when you have fur babies? People in relationships are more likely to have pets than those who aren’t — 48 percent have cats and 37 percent have dogs, compared to 37 percent of single people with cats and 31 percent with dogs. Once you get married, you commit to pets, too: 53 percent with cats, and 48 percent with dogs. Residents of rural areas were most likely to have pets (84 percent), followed by suburbanites (75 percent) and city-dwellers (64 percent). Only 26 percent of our city-dwellers have dogs, and 38 percent have cats; com-
This is Ginger and her granddaughter Reylee with their sweet puppy Nala, a 13-week-old toy poddle. She loves to play and she moves all around while sleeping.
This is Milo, a chihuahua/miniature poodle Douglas Cartier adopted from a friend who runs an adoption place and he had come from a kill shelter in LA. He was in an abusive situation here in Utah and then got struck by a car. “He is a wonder dog and my everything!”
