House Sitting a Vegan Home

 

            I am vegan for, as they say, the animals (not for health reasons, though the benefits for health are certainly a plus). I also have cats. And no matter what people tell you about cats—that they are less of a responsibility than dogs (which is true in some ways)—they nonetheless require proper attention and care (so much is obvious). Included in this care is ensuring that they are not lonely or alone for long stretches of time. They are also attached to their human owners, so with long absences, they miss us! For some owners, including me, this means that when I travel for a stretch of time (four days or longer), I prefer to have someone—a friend, a family member, a student—stay at my place and be with the cats. Even if they are not used to the person at the start, they eventually get used to them, and that helps ensure that they do not feel lonely or listless; at the least, they feel that someone is with them in the house. (This does not mean that the person has to be with them 24/7, much as I am not with them 24/7 even when I am not out of town. But it does mean that they are not left to an empty house for days on end.)

            This raises the question: Can I permissibly require whoever is staying at my place—let’s call her Ellen—to be vegan in the house? Can I require her to not eat or consume animal products in the house? Even if I can permissibly do so, would it still be somewhat obnoxious, insensitive, obdurate, dogmatic, annoying, inflexible, ungrateful, or thankless of me to ask this of her? After all, Ellen is doing me a huge favor by agreeing to stay at my place. And when I say “huge” I mean huge: she has her own place to which she is accustomed and where she is comfortable and happy. Having to relocate for a week or two and get out of her routine is a big sacrifice. The least I could do, then, is be as accommodating as possible. In addition to ensuring that the house is full of provisions for what Ellen needs, I should also allow her to eat whatever the hell she wants to eat.

This is the issue about which I often butt heads with friends, who tell me that even if I have the right—and some say that I do not have it—to impose a this-is-a-vegan-home rule (let’s call it “the VH Rule”) on house sitters like Ellen, it would be generous, kind, hospitable, flexible, or open-minded of me to not impose the VH rule, and that imposing it would make me, at least somewhat, obnoxious, insensitive, dogmatic, annoying, inflexible, and, most crucially, ungrateful or thankless.

Note that if people ask to stay at my place while they are visiting town or just visiting me, none of these vice-sounding terms would implicate me. This is because in this case I am the one doing them a favor. When I ask them to house sit, however, they are the ones doing me the favor, so I need to suck it up and suspend the VH Rule. Or so some of my friends tell me. (Note that asking people to house sit is not confined only to cases of pet care. There could be other reasons for asking people to house sit, though I won’t go into what they might be.)

I offer three arguments for why not only it is my right to ask people to maintain the VH Rule, but also for why doing so does not implicate me in any of the above-mentioned vices. The first argument is not convincing as it stands, but it has potential. The second two are, I think, strong.

1. The sensible-house rules argument. Imagine that I ask a friend of mine—let’s call him James—to house-sit my house for me. Knowing that he likes to sexually hook up with strangers, I ask him to not indulge his habit in my own house and to not allow any strangers in it; I ask that if he wants to hook up, he should go to their place instead. (This is why I use a James and not an Ellen in this example; women rarely engage in sexual hook ups with strangers.) This is a sensible thing to ask, and usually the reply is something along the lines of, “Of course I won’t! You don’t even need to ask!” This rule is sensible to insist on because no one usually wants strangers in their house. It is on a par with rules such as not leaving on the stove or oven while one is out of the house, or locking the doors at night or while out. These rules are sensible to adhere to because they are not idiosyncratic and they apply to anyone, given that they concern basic privacy or safety issues. If a potential house-sitter responds by saying, “But I am doing you a favor, so you have to allow me to entertain strangers or keep the stove on,” we can agree that the response misses the point. Granted that we are being done a favor, this would not be a license to put at risk the privacy and safety of the house. Being the recipient of a favor does not imply that I have to issue blank checks to the person doing me the favor.

Is asking Ellen to be vegan while in my house a sensible house rule? If it is, then this argument would include it. If it is not, then the argument would not. Because it is plausible that the VH Rule is not covered by privacy or safety concerns, then, if privacy and safety are the only two justifications of sensible rules, the VH Rule is not a sensible one, not in the sense that this argument presupposes. Although there could be a third justification of sensible rules that might include the VH Rule, suffice it to say that this argument can potentially include the VH Rule, depending on whether this rule can be adequately described as sensible, per the argument’s requirements. Now, if it does turn out to be a sensible rule, then, just as I am not being obnoxious or ungrateful in asking James to not bring strangers to the house, I would not be obnoxious or ungrateful in asking Ellen to be vegan while in my home. But I leave this issue open.

2. The religious household argument. Imagine a Jain family (Jains are known for not harming animals in any way, out of their commitment to non-violence)—who needs to be away from its home for an extended period of time, and in whose home, of course, meat is not whatsoever allowed. The family needs someone to house sit. (The example can be changed to any other religion, as long as the religion in question requires that the home be maintained in specific ways that accord with the family’s religious dietary or non-dietary requirements; for example, maintaining a kosher home.) The Jain family would clearly be within its moral limits, so to speak, to ask the house sitter to not have or consume meat in the house. People’s religious commitments generate, within limits, expectations that others not do things contrary to these commitments and to respect them. For example, it would be respectful to not serve pork if one’s dinner guests are Muslim. In the imagined case, the Jain family asked people to house sit, the would-be house-sitters know that the family is Jain (and what this entails), and they agree to do it. They agree, then, to house sit a Jain house, which implies that they agree to house sit a meat-free house. Moreover, in asking the house sitters to maintain a meat-free house, the Jain family is not being obnoxious, insensitive, obstinant, dogmatic, annoying, or inflexible. Instead, it is adhering to its basic religious tenets.

Now imagine a different variation of the case. Imagine that one practice to which the Jain family adheres is taking off their shoes when they enter their house. Although they adhere to this practice, and although the practice might stem from Jain religious tenets, it is not required by these tenets. If they insist that the house-sitting people engage in this same practice, then it would be plausible to claim that the family shows inflexibility, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, and ingratitude for their house-sitters. The point of this example is to distinguish between peripheral practices that the family likes to do and, because they are peripheral, on which the family may not insist that house-sitters abide by without exhibiting the above-mentioned vices, on the one hand, and basic practices on which the family may insist that the house-sitters abide by, on the other.

Now, if we agree that the Jain family is not being ungrateful or thankless in requiring the house-sitters to be meat-free, why not also agree with the (non-religious) vegan case? I see no relevant differences between the two cases such that the Jain family may—even should—insist that the house sitters keep a meat-free home, whereas the vegan family may not, and that if it did it would be convicted of ingratitude, closed-mindedness, or inflexibility. One might argue that in the case of the Jain family the commitment is religious, whereas with the vegan family the commitment is non-religious, and that the former commands more respect from guests than the latter. But we can’t know whether religious commitments command more respect than non-religious ones until we know more specifically what the nature of the non-religious commitments are. In the case of veganism, the commitment is moral, and surely moral commitments command at least as much respect as religious ones. For one thing, religious commitments often reflect moral ones, which is the case with the Jain commitment to non-violence. In this respect, religious values can reflect moral values, so are secondary to them. For another thing, moral commitments are quite serious and command respect from others. If the vegan family is committed to a principle of no-harm to animals, it is not obvious at all why this commitment should not be respected by the would-be house sitters. If one thinks otherwise, one ought to produce an argument to that effect.

There is also the thought that some religious commitments might be immoral in content, though it is difficult to imagine convincing cases in which house-sitters would be asked to abide by them. Still, imagine a case in which in order to maintain a religious home, the inhabitants spit in the direction of their neighbors or hurl waste at their house, because they consider them to be infidels. Imagine that the inhabitants asked the house-sitters to engage in the same practice while the former are away on a trip. We would rightly consider such a request to be obnoxious, the reason being that its very content is abhorrent. The point is that respecting the religious rules of a house on the part of house-sitters depends on the content of these rules. If so, then being asked to be a vegan house-sitter is parallel to the religious case.

3. The straight up moral argument. I describe this argument as a “straight up” moral argument because none of it depends on facts such as whose house it is or on who is doing a favor to whom. It is a straight up moral argument because it states that given what morality requires of us when it comes to animals, every household should be a vegan household. So maintaining vegan households ought to be the norm, and it is those houses that fail to live up to the norm that are falling short.

By way of illustration and elaboration, consider the moral norms that we ought not to sexually molest others and that we ought not to commit murder. If I were to ask my house-sitters to do neither in my house, it would not be a matter of me imposing my own rules, and it would not be a matter of the extent to which I ought to be flexible and hospitable with those who do me favors. Instead, it is simply a matter of moral prohibition, regardless of whose house it is and the nature of the favor in question. Even if the favor granted to me were much, much, much huger than house sitting (you can come up with your own example), it would not license murder or molestation. Molesting and murdering others have nothing to do with granting favors (unless some mafia or other is involved, which actually underscores my point, in that the kind of person to ask me to commit murder in return for doing me a favor would have to be a mafioso or some such similar character).

So, if moral norms prohibit us from abusing animals, such that the way to avoid this abuse is to be vegan, then it goes without saying that people ought to keep vegan households. The fact that I have to actually explicitly request it from Ellen (which is likely not the case with having to request my house sitter to not murder or molest others) says more about majority social practices than it does about me—that the majority of people are falling short of the norm, not that I am somehow doing something vicious or lacking virtue in my so asking house-sitters to ensure that my house is vegan.

I won’t argue that moral norms do require us to be vegan (many have made this argument already) and I am happy to stick with the above conditional claim—that if they do, then we ought to maintain vegan homes. I will, however, address one objection which goes as follows: Yes, it is true that we all ought to be vegan. But being non-vegan is so common and considered so normal, that asking people to not do it would be, in the current social context, asking too much. It would be like asking people to not have children even if anti-natalism is true: yes, having children is problematic, but so many people do it that it would be too much to ask anyone to not have children.

This objection touches on an important point, namely, the extent to which we may ask people to do the right thing given that an overwhelming majority of people fail to do it. However, one crucial difference is this: I am not asking Ellen to be vegan, period. I am asking her to be vegan only while she house sits for me and, more specifically, only while she is actually in my house. Suppose that she is to house sit for me from the beginning until the end of December. This means that she is free to be non-vegan after the end of December and, more specifically, during December while she is not in my house. Unless she has to house sit for months on end, it would not be too much to request of her given that the moral default is to be vegan, even if the overwhelming majority of people fail to be vegan.

Of course, few people are actually involved in butchering a cow to eat its meat or separating her offspring from her to obtain her milk. But if it turns out that the products we consume are obtained by sexually molesting or murdering others, we would surely have a moral obligation to refrain from consuming these products. The fact that most of us are not directly involved in animal abuse does not give us moral permission to enjoy the products gained from others’ abusing them.

If being vegan is the morally right practice, then refraining from the abuse of animals would be on a par with refraining from murdering or sexually molesting others. If so, then it would be perfectly okay for me to request Ellen to be vegan while house sitting. As a matter of fact, not requesting this of Ellen would mean that I am okay with her engaging, in my house, in a morally profane practice. This indicates that maintaining the VH Rule would not be vicious in any way, and that actually suspending it would be. When it comes to certain actions and practices, moral flexibility does not betoken virtue, but vice.

I then see no moral issue with requiring house-sitters to maintain a vegan practice while house-sitting a vegan home. Of course, they always have the choice to refuse to house-sit. But if they agree, then they have no grounds on which to accuse the inhabitants of the home of being vicious when they request that the home be maintained as vegan.