Physical Cruelty of Companion Animals 41 other animals necessarily predicts future violent behaviour Drawing on recent empirical research, largely in the USA, we specify the conditions under which cruelty to pets may signal, in particular, extreme forms of violence The Nature of Cruelty to Companion Animals As Agnew pointed out, anyone attempting to understand cruelty to animals ‘immediately confronts a definitional problem’ (1998, p 179) Because standards of acceptable treatment vary across species, discussions of the nature of cruelty must begin by determining which animals are under consideration If the term ‘pet’ refers simply to a favoured animal, then any species can qualify, and would even include ‘petted livestock’ (Wilkie 2010) However, the cow, sheep or pig considered a companion animal typically holds that favoured status only temporarily When the time comes to send the animal to market, he or she becomes a commodity Thus, favour alone does not make an animal a companion animal, and nor does species Some people know dogs solely as cherished companions Others regard them as racing or fighting machines or research subjects (Arluke 1988; Jackson 2001; Kalof and Taylor 2007) Thus, what it means to ‘be’ a companion, or an animal, more generally, is ‘less a matter of biology than it is an issue of human culture and consciousness’ (Arluke and Sanders 1996, p 9) Scholars of the practice of companion animal keeping limit the designation to those animals we (a) assign individual, personal names; (b) allow in the house; and most importantly, (c) would not eat (Thomas 1983) Consistent with this, we take ‘pets’ to include mostly dogs and cats but also the other species that meet these criteria Some people prefer the term ‘companion animal’ to ‘pet’, suggesting that the latter designation trivialises the animal’s role in the relationship, (Irvine 2004) Even when limiting this discussion to companion animals, efforts to determine the nature of cruelty face further challenges Legal definitions allow courts wide discretion by specifying cruelty as the infliction of unnecessary suffering This recognises that physical existence might inevitably involve some suffering and that some might even occur legally The question of how much suffering, if any, is ‘necessary’ depends on the setting and the aim of the activity (Arluke 2006; Regan 1980) While undergoing reasonable and ordinary treatment for an injury, a companion animal might endure pain, even to the extent of suffering In providing such treatment, a licensed veterinarian does not engage in cruelty A boy who sets a dog on fire to see what will happen inflicts unnecessary suffering; the researcher who burns the skin of a dog to study how burnt skin heals escapes charges of cruelty, whatever one might