Balancing Corporate & Homesteading Lifestyles
Should We Keep Our Pets During the Zombie Apocalypse?
There are certainly pluses and minuses. Dogs can be fiercely loyal, but require you to support them with precious food. Cats are not so loyal, but can fend for themselves. Your goldfish might be a burden if you have to relocate quickly, but maybe your canary can sound an alarm for you.
The end has come. You’ve seen the plot many times in pixels: marauding zombies hunting for brains while handfuls of humans struggle to survive. But now it’s for real and you have decisions to make, such as where to hole up, how to stay warm in winter, what to do for food. Oh, and should you take your pets with you?
Let’s begin with the apocalyptic rules for the sake of our discussion:
• Get bitten by a zombie and you’ll join the horde.
• Animals seem to be immune from infection.
• Zombie taste for brains is particular to the human variety.
• It is an apocalypse, so the power grid is no more, and there are no authorities to protect you. You and your family and friends are on your own.
So should you keep your pets?
We’ll begin with dogs. The apocalypse can be pretty lonely, and dogs can make life more worth living. And if you are not completely alone, when your family starts driving you crazy, your dog can keep you sane, possibly preventing you from becoming a monster yourself.
From there it gets dicey. Food will be in short supply, and getting enough for your dog compounds the problem. But maybe you stumble onto an overturned Petco truck and there’s plenty of Chewy. Still, there are other issues. If you need to move your family to another location, will the presence of a dog help or hinder you? Well, barked warnings could save your life, but it could also draw zombies, and dogs are not known for their reticence. Also, while they are courageous fighters, they are not much for discipline among the ranks…especially if they spot a walking bag of bones. So, you’ll have a lot to weigh when deciding.
What about cats? They’re very good at predicting the weather, which will come in handy. If you survive long enough to plant crops, cats can keep mice out of your harvested stash. The physicist Schroedinger showed us how cats can be both alive and dead at the same time, not sure if that would give them an edge against the undead. There doesn’t seem to be much downside to keeping your cat, except for this: toxoplasma gondii. A parasite carried by cats that will infect your brain. And with zombies already hungering for it, maybe it’s best to give your brain a break during the zombie apocalypse.
Could any other pets come in handy?
• Homing pigeons: in case you want to get a message out, since cell phones will be useless.
• Goats: because they’ll eat anything, so if you have any dead undead lying around…
• Hamsters: you can hook that wheel they love to run on into a small generator which might get you enough to charge a battery. Don’t plan on powering your home, however. It would take 460,000 hamsters.
So what’s the conclusion? Should we keep pets during the zombie apocalypse? Joanna from the Zombie Guide Magazine concluded we should not. Considering the pros and cons, I would suggest the following: if you don’t have any pets before the end comes, the apocalypse might not be a good time to consider getting one. However, if you see your pet as part of the family, as most of us do, then treat them accordingly. So if you got room in your new fortress for Uncle Irving, save a spot for Fido and Kitty.
