I’ve been telling Mabel she’ll be four soon for about a month. I bought her present similarly early, though I am unsure whether to wrap it. When the Amazon guy delivers a gift from my sister on the day, he wishes Mabel “happy birthday” through the gate. As I sing the opening bars, the build-up has clearly worked: she jumps up with excitement and licks my knees. I should clarify at this point that Mabel is not my child – she’s a cocker spaniel.
If this sounds unhinged, I’d like to stress it’s statistically very normal, actually. “Pet birthdays” are a booming market, with the UK industry alone now worth an estimated £1.7bn. A recent survey by Moonpig found 64% of pet owners in the UK celebrate their pets’ birthdays, with as many as 83% of gen Z embracing gourmet treats or even themed parties.
Karl Marx might have called pet birthdays the last stage of capitalism, where corporations convince people to spend their squeezed wages on cards for species who can’t read. The growth of social media has undoubtedly encouraged the trend. If a cat has a birthday and no one’s around to see the TikTok, does it make a meowing sound?
As I ate a celebratory slice of chocolate torte that was poisonous to dogs, I wondered whether Mabel’s special day had somehow become not about Mabel at all. Perhaps it is pointless to mark the birthday of a pet who doesn’t know what a birthday is. But then, parents spend hundreds on gifts for one-year-old children who only want to play with the boxes. Pets are a part of our families, too, so shouldn’t that include celebrating their milestones? Next year, I’ll compromise: spend less on the dog’s present, but let her eat the paper.
