Now you've got me worried. I talk to the family dog.
She just doesn't talk back. The cat is another story. :)
Seriously, why can't a story just be a story? Fantasy and imagination are sign of a health mind. As a fan of GK Chesterton, I agree with him when he says that the mind of reason is the one most likely to be the one that is mad. He further postulates that the one who is insane has not lost his reason, rather, he has lost everything BUT his reason. (His book, Orthodoxy, is the source of my butchered quotes.)
For the same reason that The Little Mermaid isn't a fantasy, but is, according to the conspiracists, a subtle introduction to child porn.
They're furious that somebody, somewhere, is having some fun.
"Now you've got me worried. I talk to the family dog."
You really don't think that 80 years of talking animal cartoons had anything to do with the emergence of this whacko animal rights crap? With the emergence of a movement that values animals over people?