Pesach and pets

[cellio]

During Pesach we are not permitted to eat, own, or benefit from chametz (leaven, but it's more complicated than that now). Traditional interpretations of halacha raise this as a problem for pet owners, because keeping your pets alive benefits you. So you have to find compliant forms of pet food, or send the pets elsewhere for a week, or perhaps sell the pets along with your chametz (I'm not sure if that works -- that would make you the custodian of someone else's pets for the week).

I think this interpretation of "benefit from" makes sense in the case of livestock (that you're ultimately going to profit from in some way), but I don't see it for pets. Pets aren't profit centers; they're family members -- you can argue about pecking order within the family, but that's another matter.

Still, I am mindful of the traditional problem. I can't change the food (one is on a special diet), and I'm not going to send them away or sell them, but I can still do something, without even invoking compassion or arguing about whether pikuach nefesh (serious health issues) applies to non-humans.

So, I hereby transfer ownership of the cat food in the house to the cats.

Comments

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Hm. If you transferred ownership of the house to the cats, then it would be their problem to clean for Pesach, wouldn't it?

[cellio]

Clever! But the lazy bums wouldn't actually do it, and I'd still have to be concerned about their chametz accidentally getting into my food, so I don't think that gets me off the hook for cleaning the kitchen.

[cellio]

Oh, and one other thing -- getting the house back after the holiday might be problematic, as they can't execute the sale. With the food, I'm making a gift with no strings attached, so I don't have to worry about it.

(The way chametz sales generally work is that all the chametz you don't want to completely get rid of gets sold to a gentile, and a week later it gets bought back. I'm describing this passively because there are details that have to be right for the sale to be valid, so generally the community's rabbi executes the sales on behalf of everyone who asks him to. But during that week the stuff really does belong to that gentile; he can show up and cart away your beer if he wants to. It only becomes yours again when he sells it back -- and I don't think the cats can conduct that sale.)

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

getting the house back after the holiday might be problematic, as they can't execute the sale.

If they don't complain about it, they must have agreed, right?

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Ha! I like this idea.

The way I've solved the pet problem in the past is to sell the cat's food to the roommates and ask them to feed the cats for the week, or to feed the cats non-chumetz for the week (tuna and chicken and such). This year, I think we're going with the first solution -- the cats get sick if they don't have their anti-hairball food, especially with the winter coat shedding.

[cellio]

I do share the house with someone who has volunteered to do things like turn lights on and off on Shabbat, but since he's Jewish I can't ask him to help. :-)