(单词翻译:单击)
I didn’t meet her owner in the hospital that day.
那天我没在医院见到她（橘猫草莓）的主人。
Strawberry would need to be hospitalized for at least a week after the surgery, and cat owners—who come from all over the country and even the world for kidney transplants;
“草莓”手术后至少需要住院一周，而猫咪主人——他们来自全国各地，甚至世界各地，为猫咪进行肾移植;
Schmiedt’s farthest patient traveled to Athens, Georgia, from Moscow—cannot always stay the entire time, because of work or family responsibilities.
施米特最远的患者从莫斯科出发抵达佐治亚州的雅典，出于工作或家庭责任，主人不能一直待在那里。
Strawberry’s owner had dropped her off right before the surgery and would pick her up after she recovered.
“草莓”的主人在手术前将她放下，等她康复后再来将她接走。
But also, the owner didn’t want her name in a magazine article about $15,000 kidney transplants.
但是，“草莓”的主人也不想让她的名字出现在一篇1.5万美元肾移植的杂志文章中。
(That’s the cost of the surgery at UGA; with travel and follow-up care, the total can be two or three times that amount.)
(这是佐治亚大学手术的费用; 加上旅费和后续护理费用，总价可能是这个数字的两到三倍。)
She wasn’t alone in not wanting to be named.
她不是唯一一位不愿透露姓名的人。
In the course of reporting this story, I spoke with more than a dozen owners, several of whom were wary of going public about their cat’s transplant.
在报道这个故事的过程中，我与十几位猫主人交谈过，其中有几位对公开猫移植手术持谨慎态度。
Others were happy, even eager, to share the experience, but they too sometimes told me of judgment radiating from family or acquaintances.
其他猫主人则很高兴，甚至很渴望分享这种经历，但他们有时也会告诉我来自家人或熟人的说三道四。
“I wouldn’t think of saying to somebody, ‘Wow, that’s an expensive car,’” one owner told me.
“我不会想对别人说，‘哇，这车真贵，’”一位猫主人告诉我。
“But people seem pretty free to say, ‘Wow, you spent a lot of money on a cat.’”
“但人们似乎可以自由地说，‘哇，你给一只猫花了很多钱。’”
And it is a lot of money.
这是一大笔钱。
For decades, Americans’ collective spending on veterinary care has been rising—it exceeded $34 billion in 2021—a sign of a broader shift in how we think about pets.
几十年来，美国人在兽医保健上的总支出一直在上升——2021年超过了340亿美元——这表明我们对宠物的看法发生了更广泛的转变。
Our grandparents might have found it indulgent to allow pets on the living-room couch, let alone the bed.
我们的祖父母可能会觉得让宠物呆在客厅的沙发上是一种纵容，更不用说床上了。
But as birth rates have fallen, pets have become more intimate companions.
但随着出生率的下降，宠物已成为人类更亲密的伴侣。
(In my own household, our cat Pete is really quite insistent on taking up the full third of the bed that he believes is rightfully his.)
(在我自己家，我们的猫皮特坚持要占床的三分之一，皮特认为床理所当然属于他。)
Cats and dogs now have day cares; health insurance; funerals; even trusts, should an owner die an untimely death—a proliferation of services that implies new obligations to pet ownership, turning it into something more like parenthood.
猫和狗现在有日托; 医疗保险; 葬礼; 如果宠物主人英年早逝，甚至还有信托——各种服务的激增意味着宠物主人的新责任，将其变成更像是为人父母的事情。
This is, in fact, why $15,000 for a kidney transplant provokes so much judgment, isn’t it?
事实上，这就是为什么1.5万美元的肾移植手术会引发这么多的评价，不是吗?
The unease with the money is an unease with the status of pets.
对金钱的不安是对宠物地位的不安。
Our very language is inadequate: They are not simply property, as pet owner implies, nor are they fully equivalent to children, as pet parent implies.
我们的语言匮乏: 宠物不像主人所指的那样简单地是财产，也不像宠物父母所指的那样完全等同于孩子。
They occupy a space in between.
它们居于两者之间。
What do we owe these animals in our care—these living creatures that have their own wants and wills but cannot always express them?
我们应该给予这些动物什么——这些生命有自己的愿望和意愿，但它们通常无法表达出来?
