A Trend That Won’t Go Away: Tattoos on House Pets

We all know that owners can tattoo house pets (dogs or cats) for identification purposes, but getting ink on the pooch or the cat for “art purposes” is not uncommon either. Despite cries of animal cruelty, the debate on whether the act is unspeakable cruelty or not is still raging on online.

Take, for instance, the cat in the attached photo: he first became famous in 2009, when his owner had Tutankhamen tattooed on his chest, sending animal rights groups in a rage over it.

His name is Mickey and, as anyone can see without as much as straining their eyes, he’s a rare Sphinx cat. His owner, a woman from Moscow, said at the time that she had him tattooed because times were a-changing and she wanted Mickey to be a reflection of those times.

Mickey was tattooed under general anesthesia, as is customary whenever a tattoo on a pet is done. A veterinary must also be present, just in case. As for whether it’s right to inflict pain on animal just for the sake of “beauty,” the debate is still raging on, as a simple Google search reveals.

The RSPCA, for one, thinks animals shouldn’t be tattooed – nor to be easier to identify, neither to make them into walking objects of “art.”

“We are totally against using animals for purely cosmetic reasons just on the owner’s whim. Clearly the animal has no say in the matter,” a spokesperson said last year, when Mickey’s case garnered international media attention.

“We do not believe in using pets as fashion accessories. It shows no respect for the animal whatsoever. So far we have only heard about this practice happening overseas – and we hope it doesn’t spread,” the rep added.

As it happens, it seems that more and more people are going online, trying to find which is the best method to have their pet tattooed (usually dogs) with the least pain, which could easily mean the trend has spread.

Moreover, it looks like it’s going nowhere anytime soon.

A Belgian tattoo artist, for example, has made a livelihood of tattooing pigs when they’re still small – and the watch the work of art evolve as the animal grows up, The Real Owner says.

“I tattoo pigs because they grow fast and they are so much better to tattoo than fish. I tattoo them when they are young and I like the way the artwork stretches and distorts over time. Essentially, we invest in small tattoos and we harvest large paintings,” Vim Delvoye once said.

His pigs are tattooed with anything from faces of women and landscapes, to the well known Louis Vuitton LV logo. On the other hand, Delvoye says, at least they’re not killed in slaughterhouses – they live their entire life as “works of art” at a farm.

While there are many out there who would see nothing wrong in getting a Hello Kitty on their pooch’s belly, most pet owners are against the practice of tattooing pets. Feel free to speak your mind in the comments section below.