Your spiel rings false as it ignores all the benefits to the animal and partially holds them up to human values, ontop of a few bits and pieces which are plain provocative and incorrect. "Crocodile tears" come on now, it's obvious that huge numbers of people genuinely care for their animals.JoJo said:Picture the scene. You're just a human kid minding your own business when suddenly without warning, super-intelligent aliens take you away from your mother and into a strange new place run by other aliens. You can't understand more than a word or two of their language and most of it's simply unlearnable by human ears for various reasons, yet they scold or hit you whenever you do something against their arbitrary rules which to you make no sense. You are fed either scraps from the table, or second rate food they buy specially. You have to pretend to be eager and be a "good human" when your masters return if you want to ever get any treats. If you're unfortunate, they may live in an environment which you can't survive in and so the rest of your life will be confined to one small tank.
When they go out, you are left alone or in the car or tied up outside, or if you're lucky you might get to come along with a rope tied around your neck so you can't escape from your "family". If the aliens keep more than one human of different genders, then there's a good chance that they'll have you castrated to prevent the inevitable, or perhaps worse maybe use you as a breeder and then take your kids away before they're grown. The aliens have far longer a lifespan than humans and so when you get old and too expensive to keep, they have you euthanatised, cry a few crocodile tears and then forget about you when they go buy a new pet human. That is your life.
As to the rest: Being a pet represents a huge increase in quality of life to most animals. A properly cared for pet lives on average a longer, healthier life in a nicer environment than they otherwise would. So let's take your example in these terms and provide a relative comparison: You now live like a billionaire in exchange for slightly limited freedom, a possibility of not being allowed to breed and double or maybe triple your current life expectancy, all in the company of affectionate beings who will socialise with you at a level similar to that which you'd socialise with someone of your own species whom you couldn't understand.
This is the exchange. Freedom is secondary to happiness, so far as i'm concerned, and 300 years of hedonism sounds pretty appealing to me.
You quite simply cannot equate the conditions that will satisfy a dog or a cat with the conditions that will satisfy a human. Cats and dogs are simpler being and thus require simpler pleasures to make their lives meaningful. You can see it in people too, there is a reason games with simplistic, repeatable systems sell very well
See:
Arcadey fps games. It's because everyone can enjoy them. They aren't difficult to understand and contain enough complexity to keep someone of an average level of intellect interested and engaged.
Scale this effect down to the intellect of a dog and you get fetching a ball and similar.