A Guide to Determining If Your Pet Is a Spoiled Rotten Asshole

This Saturday, Nat Geo, a television channel we could all once delude ourselves into believing was at least three thimbles full of educational programming, will unleash Spoiled Rotten Pets, a show about people who treat their pets like humans and treat other humans like garbage by wasting so many resources on quasi-amnesic creatures that require only four things to achieve spiritual nirvana: food, water, sleep, and affection. Pets don’t really need anything else, which is why we can walk them around on leashes or make them defecate in small boxes — they’re not people, so no one is going to judge us for heaping so many indignities on them.

Still, some people go to extremes to pamper their pets, and those people are now the subjects of a television show. Reuters explains the whole sordid concept with remarkable restraint:

The series, which will debut on U.S. cable network Nat Geo Wild on Saturday, follows host Beth Stern as she meets devoted pet owners who go above and beyond spoiling their pets – a venture the network’s chief, Geoff Daniels, said was not so hard to find.

“This is about saying that this is more pervasive that anybody thinks,” Daniels, executive vice president for Nat Geo Wild, a sister network of the Natural Geographic Channel, told Reuters.

“The show is about colorful and relatable people,” he added. “Everybody knows someone like this or does something for their pets to this degree.”

That, unfortunately, is true. Although you may not know personally know people take their pigs to a day spa or spend money for a “bark mitzvah” (which context clues tell us is probably the pinnacle of Western decadence), it is very likely that you or someone close to you has, through a combination of fawning, loneliness, and general misanthropy, overindulged a pet. Here’s how to tell if a pet close to you is indeed a spoiled asshole:

If your pet sleeps on the bed with you, then your pet is a spoiled asshole because animals will literally sleep on a jagged pile of scrap metal in the middle of a rushing river of feces if they’re tired enough. Also, animals generally love poop, so odds are that your dog/cat/iguanodon would actually prefer the scrap heap in the cozy shit river to your bed, which should make you feel both sad and resentful.
If you feed your pet table scraps, your pet is a spoiled asshole.
If you’ve seriously considered buying a sports jersey for your pet online, then your pet is a spoiled asshole because sports jerseys are overpriced and that you could even dream of spending so much money on an animal that probably HATES CLOTHES means that that pet’s needs are so well met that you’re now inventing consumerist desires for it. Consumerism is a human disease — you are corrupting the innocence and beauty of the natural world.
If your pet has a food allergy, your pet is a spoiled asshole. Pets eat garbage like all the time. Happily. I once caught my dog eating a plastic cup, like an idiot. The stomach of the modern American domestic canine contains at any given time three soiled tissues, tinfoil that was used to bake a potato, and twelve used tampons. If you’re buying your pet its own food, you’re already in the top percentile of pet owners.
If your pet licks its genitals in front of company, your pet is a spoiled asshole. Pets should know that they have to do their genital ablutions in the corner of shame, where they can, like all of God’s creatures, feel the degradation of their nakedness.
If you believe your pet has ever “demanded” anything of you, your pet is a spoiled asshole.
If your pet has its own Facebook page, your pet is a spoiled asshole because Mark Zuckerberg is now building an advertising profile for your pet, a profile that encourage you to spend fifty dollars on a new carpeted cat jungle gym that Sir Reginald Walmsley III really wants.
If your pet is your Kinja avatar, your pet is a spoiled asshole. Who takes up all the goddamn room on the couch and farts like a hippopotamus. (Please don’t anyone tell my cat I wrote this. And if you’re still reading, I’m writing this from a basement in what I think is a subdivision outside of Houston. He keeps making me sift through the litter box for gold that he thinks he’s buried. Help me.)