I can honestly say that I'm a pet parent simply because I refer to myself as Clio's mom all the time .
Being a pet parent is all about making sure she eats on time, gives her a bath when she starts to stink, bringing her to the vet for medical matters, spending time playing with her and especially not hurting her at all. I take care of my son a bit more than her because she's a dog and she doesn't really need all that affection. In fact, too much affection will just make her leave me, lol!
I've also seen videos of pet parents who threw a ridiculous wedding for their dogs. It was as big as a wealthy human wedding and I can't help but shake my head on it because spending that much for a dog that doesn't get the concept of what you did for it seemed like a waste of money to me. I know Clio doesn't need things like that because she has a home where she eats and sleeps and is always taken care of.
If that is the way you define what a pet parent is then I admit that I am one. I consider my pet dogs as my children and in fact, 2 of my 3 dogs sleep in our bedroom. Moreover, it is normal for us to bring along our dogs when we go on vacations particularly in the mountain resort where pets are allowed. There is also a beach resort where we had brought them twice last year.
I think I can call myself a pet parent, not just a pet owner. I always call my dogs my "babies" rather than pets. Some of my friends even find this peculiar, but I really do not care. Actually, I think I have learned some parenting skills when I started taking care of my pets. I have learned to be more responsible and to instill discipline to my dogs. I know this isn't enough and taking care of real human babies is entirely different, but I still feel like a real parent now. I feel like I am accountable now to my dogs.
I think of myself as my cat's momma, and often refer to myself that way in her presence. She will just look up at me with that dedicated cat stare, as if to say, "whatever you say, slave." Then she'll go out in the kitchen and demand some tuna from the big white box that lives in there. Her faithful servant will follow her in there like a mindless drone and get her the tuna, which she will then glance at and completely ignore the rest of the day. She doesn't do it because she's hungry but just because it's an expression of her power over me. I may call myself momma, but to her I'm the weird, subservient cat with the thumbs and the can opener. There are other times however, when she really does treat me as if I were a member of her family, though sometimes I think she considers herself the mother. She will watch over me as I bathe... and I know she's wondering why the process requires all that water, when I could just take a nice, tidy tongue bath like a sensible cat. She watches me as I sleep and wakes me if I make a noise. (Snoring can be frightening to a cat. It sounds like you're growling or something.) I think she figures I just had a bad dream and she needs to put a stop to it right away. She watches me while I'm watching TV, because anyone who can stare at the wall for two hours, periodically laughing and reacting in various ways, desperately needs watching over. She watches me when I talk on my cell phone, because disembodied voices come out of that little black rectangle, and that concept is just wrong somehow. It especially bothers her because I talk back to that disembodied voice. I once put the phone close to her ear and the other person on the line said my kitty's name. Her eyes got big, her ears laid flat, and she got up and hustled out of the room. The black box knew her name, and that, my friends, is very wrong.
I have a 14-year-old Chihuahua fur baby named Rudolf. Although he is a senior, he still acts like a puppy around me because I am his mommy and he loves me. I had Rudolf longer that my human child, who is now 11 years old.
I get how people can get really close to their pets and consider themselves their pet's parents but I've never felt that way. I think part of the reason was that mot of my pets I had growing up, only really listened to my mom. So mentally I probably figured that if any human was our pets' parent it was my mom. Even my cat Midnight, who I got as for a Christmas present and loved me, had a preference for my mom. She even brought him to work so he wouldn't be lonely at home while I was at school and she was at work. Most of my pets I've had as I've gotten older were children of other pets. Tony and Drew were the sons of 'my' cat Dorlea,a cat from my grandparent's house that I got to name as a child. So I naturally have some distance from being my pet's parent even though I love them.
Definitely a pet owner for me. Don't get me wrong, I love my pets as much as anybody else loves their's, but I just don't like it when a person refers to their animals as their babies. The term that seems to be banded about a lot these days is 'fur babies' and it really does make me cringe. We can treat them as well as our babies and children if we want, but it's just the fact that people are actually saying they are their babies makes me feel uneasy for some reason?
Here in the UK there also seems to be a fashion going around now that people are buying little prams for their dogs and cats, and instead of taking them for a walk, they push them around instead. I don't know who thinks of these things and while us humans might think it looks cute, it does make me wonder hat the actual animal itself is thinking. If animals could speak, I have a funny feeling that they'd tell us exactly where to go a lot of the time. you know, as we're putting their little coats on, calling them baby and tucking them into their prams...
Animals need to be treated as animals in my opinion, and that doesn't mean you can't show them any love and affection because you can, I just mean that if we're talking about a dog for example, it's a pack animal and you the oner should be seen as the head of the pack, the dogs master, and calling it baby and dressing it up, isn't exactly showing the animal who's boss now is it?
Your post is showing how much you love your pet. Pets are like family members, depend on owners to raise them. Like our children, our pets have the needs that we take should take care of. Care for your pet with right and healthy pet food, pet accessories and plenty of attention towards them become your perfect pet parent.
. 
