A few days ago, I read a piece in which a man was quoted as saying, flatly, “I ate dog food,” because he was so poor. The line snagged in my mind, not because I doubted that he had struggled, but because I doubted the arithmetic.
It brought back a much older memory. In the 1980s and 1990s, media stories, television shows, and political rhetoric frequently claimed that elderly Americans were so destitute, they were “forced to eat cat food,” because it was all they could afford. I remember hearing this as a child, and even then it didn’t ring true. I’ve been a pet owner most of my life. I know what cat and dog food cost, even the cheap stuff. And as a mom who often lived on the edge of poverty, I know what human staples cost, too. Tuna, ramen, rice, beans, oatmeal — these have always been cheaper, pound for pound and calorie for calorie, than commercially prepared pet food.
