One line that you should never, ever say to a date is that you love your pets as much as he or she loves his or her children. I have five cats: Fuego (12), Sky (4), River (2), and Luna and Noke (four months). I also have two hamsters and a frog. Besides this menagerie, I’ve had just about every kind of pet you can dream up—ferrets, dogs, other cats, frogs, gerbils, guinea pigs, rabbits, a chick, turtles, mice, anoles, a salamander… I could go on. I love and did love each and every one of these pets dearly.

But I have never, nor will I ever, love one as much as I love my child. And you can’t tell me that you love your pet as much as I love her, as friend who went on a date with a man who keeps dogs recently told me—or as this Facebook group maintains (and compares potty training a dog with caring for a two-year-old, which tells you right away how completely unaware such pet owners are). The line did not impress her, nor should it.

If you never have children, no matter how many you are around, no matter how many you claim as your niece or nephew, I don’t think you’ll ever know this desperate, neverending, deep deep, beautiful, terrible, unconditional love. I say this because I grew up caring for my two sisters as if they were my own children and I would die for them. I grew up with oodles of pets, students, and loved ones that I will always love, too. But I didn’t know that love could be this bottomless and scary until I had my own daughter.

Let me ask you this: would you die for your pet? Would you give it your organs or your blood if it came to it? Would you rush back into a burning building to save him or her (or refuse to leave until you find your pet), or pay for a $20,000 operation to save his or her life? If someone were shooting at your pet, would you jump in front of the bullet, taking it straight into your heart to save his or her life?

Have you stayed up day and night for two months straight, sick from exhaustion but refusing to sleep as you provide your pet with nebulizer medicines and therapy for various conditions, some of them life-threatening? Have you given your pet hours of physical, occupational, and developmental therapy each day to help him recover from his prematurity, or spent day and night by her side at an incubator? Have you stressed over your own milk production to sustain her?

Do you worry about your pet constantly, wondering what he or she will do with his or her life, if the words you choose will be helpful or taken differently than you mean—or if they will, in fact, cause your pets to seek therapy in their old age? Do you worry about them being killed or raped or mugged or just hurt by a friend? Do you worry about what food groups they’re getting, how on track their development is or not, if they’ll need braces or glasses?

Again, I could go on for days; again, I’m betting the answer to most, if not all, of these questions is no.

Your love for your pet is not even on the same planet as my love for my child. I do not doubt that your love is meaningful and heartfelt and important to you; my love for my own pets is as well, and I even get upset and worry when they get sick, hoping that Fuego will last as long as my Binx did (nearly 20 years), and hoping that my Sky’s weird voice change doesn’t indicate something wrong (especially since she is my favorite cat, but don’t tell!). But please do not tell me that your love for your furry companions is even close to the love I have for my daughter, for it is nothing like my love for my kid.