Once a year I visit a pet store, usually shortly before Christmas. I don’t go there because I’m planning to give someone a pet as a Christmas present, but because we already have a pet – our tomcat Benjamin. Every Christmas, he gets his favourite present – a plastic pot of fish food!

Pet stores always make me slightly uneasy. The idea of buying and selling living creatures, especially our most loyal companions, is not a pretty one. Under the law, animals are considered much the same as any other goods to be bought and sold at will, but that doesn’t make it any better. In the store window, I see a couple of hamsters standing on their hind legs, peering at me with beady black eyes. A dwarf rabbit presses its pink nose against the glass. I open the door and am immediately engulfed by a wave of a perfume called ‘eau de farmyard’. To get to the section with Benjamin’s fish flakes, I have to cross the whole store. On my way, I pass numerous boxes and cages containing some of our little friends.

Suddenly, I come face to face with a half-naked African Grey parrot, hunched up on his perch in a cage. This poor devil looks like an exotic cross between a goose (plucked and ready for the oven) and a parrot, but he isn’t. No, he has pulled out his own feathers – as the result of psychological stress, out of loneliness, because he has lost his mate or perhaps simply because he lacks affection?

If I could, I would take all the animals with me, build an ark and offer them a better life without human beings knocking on the glass, staring at them, poking and prodding them around. With my pot of fish food in my hand, I march to the cash desk. Paradoxically, on the back of the till there is a sticker left over from the 1970s. ‘Help the animals’, it says. I flee from the shop and head for the ‘Vegi Inn’ for a spot of – meat-free – lunch.

Amazingly good!

In a large city, I found a pet store that doesn’t stock live animals but shows its customers pictures on their computer or videos. Inside, the store looks like a cosy bistro with a seating area, though of course, it still stocks all the food, toys and equipment you need for your pets. If you want a pet, you choose it via computer and order it by mouse click.