Ok, here's a weird one. Do you think it's feasible to be able to have pets like a cat, fish, or hamster, in an underground complex? Specifically it's an underground research facility that is a self contained city. There's a residential disctric, a shopping district, the lab, and other levels- and I need to know if you think certain pets could be kept down there. It isn't closed off to the world, so it's not like they can't dispose of the excrement or the dead bodies. This is for a novel I'm working on, and Google isn't helping. Apparently this isn't a topic on many people's minds. So question is, would you as a reader (for those who would be interested in the underground city plot) freely accept the presence of these animals underground? Could it easily be explained through narrative without sounding cheaply tacked-on? Specifically need an answer on the cat, please. Thank you!
Personally I can't really see why not. As long as the pets get something to eat (with the necessary nutrients) and some light (which I assume you already have, if humans live down there) they should do rather fine. I guess you can think of it like having an indoors cat, except 'indoors' is as big as a city (if the pets can move around freely). Also, it's a fictional world so you make the rules. And this particular case doesn't, as outlined above, sound particularly unlikely anyway. I do believe I've already encountered similar cases in other books I've read. As an example, if I'm not mistaken, in the Tunnels series both dogs and cats are held in an underground city. To answer your question: Yes, I would freely accept underground cats (and other pets)!
I can't even see why there'd be a question. People have pets that never leave their homes; this is a much bigger space than a home.
If it were an emergency situation, I can see how the pets might be seen as a forbidden luxury, but it sounds like society is pretty normalized down there (with a shopping district, etc.) so I wouldn't have an issue with it. You might have a problem with cat food - my understanding is that they need a VERY meat-based diet - dogs can go vegetarian with proper attention to nutrition, but as I understand it, cats really can't. If your people are producing their own food, it's probably plant-based (because meat takes a lot of space to produce with anything close to humane conditions) so there might be an issue feeding the cat. But if this is just a research facility and food is shipped in, the people live their voluntarily, etc., sure, I can see pets actually being really important. They're an important form of stress relief and contribute to mental health for a lot of people.
Thanks, everyone. That helps a lot. And yes it makes sense that they can be used as a form of stress relief and contribute to mental health. As far as lights go, my current theory is that all the lights in the base are created to simulate sunlight, but dialed down to a specific wattage so that the occupants receive only roughly the standard amount of vitamin D necessary throughout the day. Does that make any sense? otherwise, it will have to be mandatory to take a daily vitamin D tablet, and a daily one to two hour recess top ground.
You would probably need cats to control the rats that would undoubtedly run amuck in a contained environment. If there is a technical reason that the facility has to be underground then would that reason affect non-human animals in some odd way? You wouldn't want a "Red Dwarf" situation where cats become human like over time.
I find it hard to imagine any permanently designed living space for humans that didn't include pets. Too many people find pets necessary to their happiness.
I would think that in an artificial situation like that, pets would almost be a necessity for some people in order to maintain some semblance of normalcy. Depending on why they're living there, an underground city seems like it would be a breeding ground for stress, anxiety, and depression (although I could just be projecting), and having pets has been proven to help alleviate some of these problems. The biggest problem, as has been mentioned in an earlier post, would be the food, because dogs and cats are both carnivores and require a meat based diet to be truly healthy.
Are there like trees in the streets? Where I live in some streets they have tree postings on the streets. Livens up the scenery. that kind of stuff would make them more comfortable. They could go to the park.
Okay, I'm game. What is "tree postings?" Must be some sort of Aussie thing. Back here on the big island between the 'ponds' we have tree lined streets. Heck, in the Atlanta area a huge percentage of streets are named Peachtree which is a southern drawl of pitch tree heard by Yankee ears and morphed into Peachtree, but we make posts out of trees and might put a picture of one on a postage stamp but never a tree posting. Hold it, some native Indians made totem poles, maybe that is tree posting?
