Animal laws are antiquated, in that they never caught up with the American culture concerning common household pets. Animals are legally regarded as mere property, not as the sentient beings they are. The laws need to catch up with this reality, and this include animal cruelty--people get off too easy with torturing and maliciously killing animals. I believe it's high time for Congress to push a Pet Parent's Bill of Rights, covering everything from encouraging adoption from shelters by giving each pet adopted from a shelter a pet tax ID for the purpose of tax breaks, banning housing discrimination against pet parents, to requiring employers to allow pet sick days to let people take their sick pets to a vet for treatment, to toughening animal cruelty laws nationwide.

I propose the idea that animals should be legally regarded not as mere property, not as humans, but in a legal class by themselves between inanimate property and persons. This should hold true especially for common household pets, e.g., cats, dogs, domesticated species of birds, guinea pigs, domesticated rabbits, etc. Pets should be protected from "murder" by punishing offenders a maximum of 20-35 years in prison; from intentional torture and/or petnapping by imposing a maximum sentence less than that of kidnapping, but more than that of mere theft of inanimate objects. This proposed protection would reflect the nature of pets not as property, but as the family members they're treated like at home.

Wild animals, especially endangered species, have more protection than household pets, yet culturally, we regard pets in more esteem than their wild cousins. Wild animals' habitats are better protected by law than the domestic animals with whom we share our homes; for instance, landlords and condo building owners can still legally discriminate against pet guardians either by charging higher rental rates to pet parents than household without cats or dogs; by imposing a high, non-refundable pet fee, ostensibly to cover property damage caused by pets, but in reality, these pet surcharges serve to discourage tenants and/or condo owners from keeping a cat and/or dog. Some landlords or homeowners' assocations even ban pets outright and evict tenants and/or condo owners, forcing the latter either to give up their animals or sell their condos. This discrimination forces human beings to choose between a roof over their heads and their beloved furkids. This injustice must be banned once and for all. Landlords and condo building owners should bear the burden of proof that the pet is antisocial and/or destructive; in other words, a pet should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Any human found guilty of keeping a pet who is proven to be unsocialized, aggressive, destructive, or any and all of the aforementioned should be required to give up the offending animal at his or her own expense. We should put an end to punishing innocent, responsible pet parents along with the guilty, irresponsible sociopaths who use animals as mere objects to be used and abused at will.
Exemptions from complying with the pet anti-discrimination law would be: homeowner is not allowed to keep a pet due to an injunction by a court of law and a tenant is bringing in a pet; if the presence of a pet creates an undue health hardship to the homeowner. Example: the homeowner wants to rent a room yet is severely allergic to cats. The prospective tenant has a cat and wants to move in with the kitty. In this case, the homeowner can tell the tenant he or she has to give up the cat because Boots would make him or her too sick to function.

I think we should be afforded a break on our income taxes if we adopted a cat or dog from a shelter. Each adopted pet would be assigned a tax ID number similar to a Social Security number, only the first character would be an F (feline) for an adopted cat or a C (canine) for an adopted dog. There would be a pet dependent allowance of $500 for each cat and $500-750 for each dog, depending on the size of the dog upon adulthood. For instance, Kitty's Tax ID would look like this: Fxx-xx-xxxx, and Doggie's would be Cxx-xx-xxxx. This number would be used solely for income tax purposes, and can be transferable for a $5.00 fee to a new guardian either upon the death of the human. If the human caregiver can no longer care for the adopted animal due to incarceration or some other reason the people can no longer keep the animal, the pet transfer fee would increase to $20.00. If the animal is brought back to the shelter, or to another shelter, the transfer fee would go up to $50.00.