Pets, and the futility of trying to make a difference

I think the thing that's been making me most sad / angry / frustrated with humans in the long term is the keeping of pets. I consider the captivity of animals to be one of the greatest evils of civilization, and can't understand why the overwhelming majority don't think twice about its morality.

Sure, for those speciesists who think animals have no feelings, why not treat them as property and use them for one's own sick pleasure? But what about the many, many people who believe animals do have feelings, yet have no qualms keeping them as pets? Where do they get these contradictory beliefs?

Would anyone keep a human in a cage, an aquarium, or locked in a house while they're away? Not many would, because humans have a right to freedom. But how can someone believe that animals have feelings like humans without granting them the same right of freedom? How can so many people believe that something with feelings can also be their property?

It would be wrong to put a human in a bubble and attempt to provide for all its needs and keep it safe. You simply would miss out on some of those needs, because you don't have the ability to provide for all of them. How much more wrong, then, is it to try to put an animal in a protective bubble, when you can't even communicate with the animal to find out all of its needs, let alone provide for them?

You'll of course argue that now that animals are domesticated, they can't survive in the wild, so they have to live with us. Then the appropriate response is at the very least to let them roam free in the country - give them to someone who lives there if you can't live there yourself. Furthermore, pets certainly don't need to continue to exist. If they're all neutered, and people actually are willing to give up this slave trade, then they'd be gone in a generation. Another thing that would drastically reduce their numbers is to stop buying things from pet stores. Pet stores have an incentive to keep pets in existence, so as long as they exist, they'll make sure that pets exist. It's just not good enough to get a pet from the SPCA and then buy food for it from a pet store.

What makes me most frustrated is that there isn't really anything I can do to make the world a better place in this respect. People who believe in a cause like stopping human hunger can easily do something about it - volunteer at a soup kitchen or donate money to charity. But people who believe in causes like putting an end to the keeping of pets can do nothing more than not contribute to it. Even acts of civil disobedience, such as trying to set pets free, would do nothing - the people with these immoral beliefs would merely breed more pets and keep those ones instead. There isn't anything we can do to stop it, and this is a very saddening, lonely fact.