Do people keep pets in Lyra's world?

[Ian]

Do people keep pets in Lyra's world? When Lyra is told that if Pantalaimon is cut away, he will be just like a pet, she is dumbstruck, and when she sees Will with the cat that guides him to the window under the hornbeam trees, she is amazed that he has adopted the cat as a pet/friend. Do they only have working animals in Lyra's world, or is she simply from the wrong background?

[pjmaster]

i think in lyras world they dont really need pets to keep them company ,because they have daemons for that.

[krebbe]

Do people keep pets in Lyra's world? When Lyra is told that if Pantalaimon is cut away, he will be just like a pet, she is dumbstruck, and when she sees Will with the cat that guides him to the window under the hornbeam trees, she is amazed that he has adopted the cat as a pet/friend. Do they only have working animals in Lyra's world, or is she simply from the wrong background?

I think you may have spotted an inconsistency.

[daemons-master]

i think in lyras world they dont really need pets to keep them company ,because they have dæmons for that.

yeh i think your right, they still obviously have animals but they don't keep them as pets.

[Melancholy Man]

Until, I think, ten years ago Ankara Zoo had a specimen of Canis familiaris.

[Kyrillion]

The first time I read Mrs. Coulter's line about 'like a pet' I thought it didn't make sense - I wondered why people would bother domesticating animals (except as working animals) when they had daemons. BUT (ta-da) two points:

1. daemons are not pets. They have elements of that relationship, but they also have elements of siblings, parents, children, firneds and all sorts of other relationships - if the people in Lyra's world still feel a need for these bonds why not a human-pet bond?

2. Regardless of their modern function/lack of function, most domestic animals originated as working animals (for herding, hunting, rat-catching, guarding, racing etc) and only when they became redundant in these respects evolved into pets. I might expect Lyra's world to have fewer of the breeds that were domesticated purely for pet use like rats, mice, lapdogs etc.

[Ian]

Though they must clearly have known of their exstistence, because there are people (as far as I remember) who have poodle daemons.

[clarion]

Are poodles only used for petting? If so, I had no idea.

[Kyrillion]

Ah, no, poodles are ex hunting dogs in fact. Curiously enough they're one of the most intelligent breeds of dog around and have also gone into battle as soldiers companions. There are all sorts of stories about poodles catching bullets.

But your point stands: I believe there are mentions of daemons taking pet-type forms... I just can't think of any...

Ceres had a hamster daemon in a story

[Leif]

But your point stands: I believe there are mentions of dæmons taking pet-type forms... I just can't think of any...

Wouldn't you consider Kirjava a pet-type form?

Also, all the servants have dog daemons...

[clarion]

I think the type of animals we consider pets in our world, are dæmons or working animals in Lyra's. And yes, I think we have run into another one of PP's inconsistancies.

[Ian]

Ah, no, poodles are ex hunting dogs in fact. Curiously enough they're one of the most intelligent breeds of dog around and have also gone into battle as soldiers companions. There are all sorts of stories about poodles catching bullets.

But your point stands: I believe there are mentions of dæmons taking pet-type forms... I just can't think of any...

Ceres had a hamster dæmon in a story

I didn't know that, that's very interesting. Does that mean that they are only 'pets' because they are friendly, clever enough to sit still on someone's lap, and because someone has cut their fur in a funny way Kyrillion?

[Peter]

Ah, no, poodles are ex hunting dogs in fact. Curiously enough they're one of the most intelligent breeds of dog around and have also gone into battle as soldiers companions. There are all sorts of stories about poodles catching bullets.

But your point stands: I believe there are mentions of dæmons taking pet-type forms... I just can't think of any...

Ceres had a hamster dæmon in a story

*Reminds self not to get into Kyrillion's bad books. She has a very long memory*

Also a mole-daemon, a common house-cat (presumably L-worlders still need to keep mice under control) masquerading as a non-L-worlder's daemon and an adult human hoping that nobody will notice that his daemon has been Severed.

Lyra had thought of everything, it seemed, including the needs of the animal which nestled in my jacket pocket. She handed me a small packet of cashews and I fed them to the creature as we rode along. She was a pretty thing, I had to admit, and her devotion to me, although a mockery of our previous intimacy, was touching in its own way. When I had been in John Parry’s world, he had told me that people there kept animals, not just to work for them, as horses and dogs do in our world, or to kill and eat, like sheep, but also as companions. Pets – that was the word he used.

‘It’s as if,’ he had said, ‘the men and women in my world wished they had daemons too. They don’t know it consciously, but inside themselves they do, so they adopt animals instead and take them home to live with them.’

‘That must be very strange,’ I had said. ‘To have a daemon that isn’t a daemon,’ for I understood by then that the people of John’s world carried their daemons within themselves.

‘The people and the animals sometimes grow very close to each other,’ John had said. ‘It’s not the same thing as having a proper daemon,’ and he stroked his Rosalind, ‘but it is a little bit like it. There’s real love there, they say.’

Real love. The words sounded meaningless to me now. I could not feel real love for this squirrel, knowing how it had been between us before we were Severed. But I held her in my hand, and fed her cashew nuts, and ran my hand down her back as the ‘bus bounced and rolled along the narrow country roads to the north of Oxford.

And yes, I think we have run into another one of PP's inconsistancies.

It's practically ten years since Northern Lights was published and since then it's been through a couple of minor revisions fixing, for example, the Ma Costa's daemon problem and suppressing the sometime Master of Jordan's succubus-daemon.

Does that mean, then, that any remaining apparent inconsistences are in fact intentional? Or are we simply at NL V1.1 and awaiting a security update to V1.2?

[clarion]

I thought that the part when Lyra felt terrible after leaving Pan because he was more than just a mere pet was an inconsistancy, because I don't think pets exist in Lyra's world. But now that I think about it, Lyra was aware of Will's cat, so I've changed my mind.

What was the inconsistancy with Ma Costa's dæmon? I've never heard of that one, unless I've forgotten about it.

[Peter]

I thought that the part when Lyra felt terrible after leaving Pan because he was more than just a mere pet was an inconsistancy, because I don't think pets exist in Lyra's world. But now that I think about it, Lyra was aware of Will's cat, so I've changed my mind.

This one is fudgeable - think of sheepdogs. Some of the time they are working animals, the rest they may be house-pets.

What was the inconsistancy with Ma Costa's dæmon? I've never heard of that one, unless I've forgotten about it.

A hawk in one place, a wolf in another. A simple cock-up on PP's part. He should have written himself a list of his characters and their daemons. Unless...

[Kyrillion]

Silly old Philip.

daemon: essentially yes - many working dogs are redundant these days but the breeds remain as pets. Oh and the haircut - in fact this has practical origins since a poddle's naturally thick, curly hair tends to get caught in hedgerows.

The practice of docking tails has similarly practical origins; these days its just random cruelty.


I still maintain that people would keep pets in L-world for the same reason people maintain other relationships (like friendship, family ties etc) because daemons aren't a replacement for any of these relationships.

A relationship with an animal is fundamentally different to a relationship with one's soul, whatever form it takes.

For instance, my rat Saoirse saw me through some teen tantrums where she was told at length that she was the only person in the house that really loved me, and had her fur liberally soaked with tears - it would have spoiled things if she'd told me to pull myself together.