Have any pets in your house or yard? If you're a typical Presbyterian, you do. And it's more than likely a dog or a cat (or both).
Am I psychic? Alas, no. But I do have access to responses to the first-ever Presbyterian Panel question on pet preferences, asked late last year. Read on. Soon you'll know enough to fascinate your table companions at the next church potluck.
Around one-half of lay Presbyterians have a pet. More precisely, 49 percent of members and 52 percent of elders report one or more pets at home. Clergy are a bit more likely to have a pet, especially pastors, 65 percent of whom report a pet at home. Among specialized clergy, the rate is 54 percent.
Pet ownership rates among Presbyterians are similar to those in the U.S. population generally. In 1999, a Gallup Poll found that 54 percent of respondents had either a dog or a cat (or both).
Among Presbyterian households with pets, slightly more than one-half (whether laity or clergy) include one or more cats. Even more, around six in ten, include one or more dogs. These figures overlap, since around one-third of dog-owning households also have one or more cats and more than four in ten cat-owning households also have one or more dogs.
Three-fourths of dog-owners have only one dog and one-half of cat owners have only one cat. There are a few multi-canine and multi-feline exceptions, however, so the average is higher. For example, among members, the average number of dogs in dog households is 1.3, and the average number of cats in cat households is 1.8. Surprisingly, perhaps, only a handful of members (2 percent of dog owners) have more than three dogs, although 9 percent of members who own cats have four or more of the moggies.
Few pet households have animals other than cats or dogs. Around one in ten have fish usually several and around one in twenty have a bird or birds. In a couple of cases, these include larger fowl, such as pigeons, geese and ducks.
Other pets in panelists' households include various reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles), rodents (gerbils, rabbits, chinchillas, hamsters even a rat), and larger mammals (horse, fox, deer, pot-bellied pig). At least one person reports pet spiders, and one, a pet amphibian, in this case, a newt.
Finally, one Presbyterian claims a pet donkey. Confidentiality provisions prevent me from disclosing the owner's name. But I can reveal that it is not Balaam.
Email the author: Jack Marcum
Research Services