These People Completed Their Families With Pets Instead of Babies (and Don’t Regret a Thing)

When I snuggle up with my dog, Lucy, in bed, I can’t imagine a purer, simpler kind of love. I breathe in her scent and it makes me so happy. I could lie like that forever. She’s not a baby, but she’s my baby. The love I have for her is like nothing I ever imagined I’d experience. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s a human in there. My husband and I don't have children, but Lucy made us a family.

How people choose to make their family is personal decision – only you know what‘s right for you, despite what unsolicited input you may receive. And something that doesn’t get talked about (or celebrated) enough are the young people who are opting to complete their family with pets. In fact, a recent study found that 70 percent of millennial women who have chosen not to have children view their pet as their child.

So, I decided I wanted to tell more of the stories of chosen pet families. Read on to hear from family units where some members have four legs but beware, you might want to have some tissues at the ready...

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Sara, Warren and their cats Tom and Cleo

HR advisor Sara, 38, comes from a long line of cat people. “We’re just a cat family,” she says. “My aunts had cats, they’re a family staple.” So it was destined that Sara would end up with cats of her own. Tom and Cleo came into her and her partner Warren’s life after she’d spent months trawling rescue sites. “I knew I wanted a pair,” she explains, “I wanted them to have each other.” 

Warren and Sara never sat down and had the conversation about not wanting kids. Sara thinks it’s all just happened the way it was supposed to. “The cats made us a family,” she says. She even started to notice a different version of her partner coming out when she brought the kittens home. “There’s a paternal side,” says Sara. “As much as he doesn’t want to admit he loves them like children, I can see it there in the baby voices he does and it brings this softer, nurturing side out of him.” 

Sara says that her family and friends all understand that she’s never been maternal. “When I meet up with friends who have kids, we quickly get the kids chat and then my cat updates out of the way,” she says. “Then, we’re just hanging out together as us and talking about other stuff. It’s a gorgeous relationship. I don’t want to hang out with people who talk about their kids all the time, and they don’t want me to talk about my cats!” 

Sara believes there’s endless different types of love you can experience. “There’s the love of a child, and the pet love,” she says. “And pets are for me.”

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Sharmila and her cats, Tommie, Wolf and Stella

When 41-year-old TV line producer Sharmila fostered a pair of cats for four months in 2020, she didn’t expect to be so devastated when they left. “I’d become so attached,” she says. But then a friend mentioned a litter of kittens and asked if she wanted to rehome any of them. “I said yes, and that’s how Tommie and Wolf came to live with me in May 2020.”

Last year, someone else asked Sharmila if she knew anyone who wanted to rehome a kitten. “Without giving it a thought, my mouth said yes before my head had considered the implications of a third, but somehow it felt right, and that’s how Stella joined the family. It all felt like divine intervention, like these cats were coming into my life in this particular and very similar way for a reason.” Sharmila was powerless to resist.

For Sharmila, the benefits of her pet family are vast. “I live on my own, so having these cute fluffballs to come home to feels wonderful.” Sharmila’s cats are indoor cats so their entire existence revolves around her home. “They need contact, attention and stimulation to make up for the fact they don’t go outside,” she explains. “This satisfies the nurturing, maternal side of me, which clearly needed an outlet. I have purpose outside of my own needs and nothing has felt more natural to me than being an animal parent. I genuinely miss them and think about them constantly when I’m not with them!” 

Sharmila says that when her older niece was born, she was ecstatic to be an aunty, but seeing how challenging having a newborn is – how it impacts a person’s body, hormones and life – she knew it was not something she wanted for herself. “Being an auntie is enough.”

Her choice has been solidified with how fulfilled she is as a cat mum. “I'm lucky that my brother has two children, which has satisfied my parents’ demand for grandchildren, yet I still get rather unhelpful comments from my mother like, ‘Oh but why don’t you just have one?’ She’s worried I'll regret it, but she also harbours archaic views on a woman’s purpose; that unless she fulfils the role of being a vessel for procreation, she won’t have realised her full potential.” When Sharmila tells her mum that she’s given her animal grandchildren, she laughs it off and tells her to “stop being so silly”. Thankfully, Sharmila’s friends and chosen family are hugely supportive of her decision. “I truly believe it’s the best decision I’ve ever made!”

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Gary and his dog Margot 

Gary thought that as he got older and his friends started having kids that he might start wanting them too – “but it didn’t happen,” the 41-year-old says. “Watching my friends have kids actually cemented that I didn’t want them even more.” 

One Christmas, six years ago, Gary looked after his neighbour’s dog when they went to Australia. “I realised I didn’t want to give her back,” says Gary, “I kept seeing her and wishing she was coming home with me.” He couldn’t get the idea of getting his own dog out of his mind, so he did the research and found Margot from a breeder in York. “She’s now four and a half years old,” he says. “She’s my bestest mate. That’s the number one benefit. When you walk in from a crap day, Margot makes me smile. It’s an unconditional kind of love.”

Gary works as a plumber and takes Margot with him on jobs if he can. “On the days I take her, I always ask: ‘Do you want to go to work?’” says Gary, “and she bounces off the wall. I wish I had her enthusiasm for work,” he laughs. He also likes to treat Margot, and often orders her a bacon sarnie or a Sunday lunch. “Waitresses look at me like I’m mad,” he says, “but how could I not?”

Gary’s bond with Margot is like nothing he expected. “You realise that they can’t do anything without you. They need you. But then you realise you need them just as much.” 

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Kirsten, Louise, and their cat, Honey, 10 guinea pigs, two rats and two hamsters

Retail manager Kirsten was on her way to leading a more ‘conventional’ life; she was with a man, they’d got a dog called Millie, then they started trying for a baby. “But I had this feeling, like the thought of actually getting pregnant really upset me,” she says, although she didn’t understand why. 

“For one reason or another, that didn’t happen,” says 42-year-old Kirsten. “Then we split up, and I was left with this massive emptiness.” At first, Kirsten thought that should be filled by a child – “society makes you think that as a woman, you should be a mum,” she says. She even researched adoption and IVF, but nothing felt right. Instead, she adopted a ginger kitten called Honey with “serious attitude” who became Kirsten’s best friend. 

Everything really changed when Kirsten met and fell in love with Louise, a woman so adamant she didn’t want children that she looked into having a hysterectomy in her twenties. By the time Louise and her hamster moved in with Kirsten, she also had Ariel the cat. “Maybe I’m an outrageous animal person, but Louise is 1,000,000 percent worse than me,” laughs Kirsten. That’s how they ended up with (current tally): one cat (Honey is still alive, but sadly Ariel and Millie the dog passed away); 10 guinea pigs – Alvin, Peach, Biggie Smalls, Bambi, Daisy, Patch, Pongo, Moon Pig, Purdita and Sid Pig; two rats – Winnie and Minnie; and two hamsters – Ginny and Binks. The couple even run a boarding service now called Guinea Pig Paradise. 

“It was a slow escalation,” says Kirsten. “Would I have this many animals without Louise?” Kirsten questions. “Probably not! But I love our little life together with all our animals. Each and every one of them has amazing personalities. They’re a massive part of our lives. I don’t care if people think we’re silly.” And Kirsten’s convinced their family will just keep growing. “We just see an animal and think, how can we give this animal a nice life?”

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Keely and her dog Audrey

Every night, Keely and her husband swaddle their dog Audrey up into a blanket and pretend she’s the newborn Simba from The Lion King while singing ‘Hakuna Matata’. Trainee counsellor Keely, 39, has always known she didn’t want a human baby. “I’ve never once had that so-called maternal longing, but I’d always known I wanted a dog,” she says. Keely grew up in a house with dogs, so for her, a dog is integral to family life.

She found Audrey during the first lockdown of 2020. “I’d wanted an Affenpinscher since 2015 after seeing them on TV at Crufts,” she says. “I knew instantly that that was the breed I needed in my life.” She did her research and joined various Affenpinscher Facebook groups until she found the right breeder. “When the breeder called me, she told me she’d named her Audrey, which was without knowing I’d also decided on the name Audrey!” It felt meant to be.

“Audrey brings me endless joy and I adore caring for her,” says Keely. “I think we have a symbiotic relationship because she’s definitely mummy’s girl and is glued to my side most of the day.” 

Occasionally, Keely will get comments from her parents that hint towards the fact she treats Audrey like a baby. But, she says, they also treat their own dogs like family members. “Recently my mum quoted what the pope said about how people shouldn’t choose pets over children,” says Keely, “but she knows how much I love Audrey and the happiness she brings to my life.” 

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Kate, Woody and their dog Charlie Brown

Kate adopted their first dog Darwin in their early 20s. “He was my soul dog,” says the tattoo artist. “My mental health was poor, and caring for Darwin as a happy soul and dependant inadvertently helped me care for myself.” When Darwin passed away, Kate felt his loss deeply and the inescapable grief of another national lockdown meant Kate and partner Woody couldn’t escape the home where their “sweet boy” should be. So they started talking about fostering.

Enter Charlie Brown – ”a little Greek rescue of endlessly changing proportions”. The couple picked him up on New Year’s Eve in 2020. “We were on the brink of leaving the EU and there was pressure for European shelters to get as many dogs into UK fosters. It’s easier to get prospective adopters to meet animals in a home setting in the UK before the costs and paperwork became even harder,” explains Kate. “We didn’t ‘choose’ Charlie per se, he was offered to us and we waited patiently for the transport van to arrive, not knowing the size, shape or demeanour of our charge – in a way, like an expectant parent. You also don’t know this person you’re going to meet, but you promise to love and care for them as you find them.”

Charlie was with Kate and Woody as a long-term foster and he was by no means ‘easy’. “He bit Woody in the face,” says Kate, “we had to watch him eat his dinner as he was so nervous around food, but as we saw him unfurl and learn to be a playful, happy boy, we knew his place was with us and we adopted him a few months later.”

As a non-binary person, Kate says that pregnancy was never something that felt safe or wanted for them. “We have ended accidental pregnancies together, I know Woody is the person I feel safest with. For a moment that is sad and hard, because if it was going to be with anyone it would have been us as a team,” says Kate. “I know lots of enby folks feel comfortable to go through pregnancy but I really tried to want that years ago – I guess a wanted a drive and a purpose like parents seem to step into.” But Kate found that purpose rescuing Charlie instead. “We have the privilege of watching a strange, frightened and angry Greek goblin come out of his shell. When we collected the matted, poop-covered little mess and welcomed him into our home, we didn’t have expectations of what we wanted. I just wanted him to feel safe. We couldn’t have imagined the gentle soul we’d meet.”

Kate says Charlie dances for joy, skips to entertain himself, eats butterflies, picks blackberries, sings songs and grumbles to punctuate the times he’s asking for something they don’t understand yet. “He sticks his ears out in lieu of a smile, stretches his toes, and bows deep to show his pleasure,” says Kate. “He sleeps tucked in between us at night and we have to fight to hold each other as he wiggles his way in between.” Kate references an episode of Frasier where the titular character tells a pregnant and anxious Roz: “You don’t just love your children, you fall in love with them.”

“And I can’t see for a moment how that is different or greater than the little, soft boys we’ve cradled in our arms who made us a family,” says Kate, “a love supreme.”