"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. " Anatole France
“Remember our stories
when fur and bones
and tail of me are gone.
Share them with some new mouser,
who’ll need to learn where blue jays live,
where rabbits hide…
who’ll share your couch
and bowls of milk,
who’ll be your friend…
though maybe not
as good a friend as I.”
From “Old Cat” by Barbara Libby
We are going to be talking today about the grief we feel when a pet dies. If you have ever had a pet, there comes a very sad day when we have to say goodbye. Most pets have a short life span compared to us humans and so we may face this ritual many times over in our life. We love our pets so much. This love is evident here on Health Central with how you all talk about your furry friends. One of the most popular posts on My Depression Connection was a Midweek Muse about our pets . So many of you chimed in to tell the stories of how your pet helps you to cope with your depression. It is little wonder then that when a pet dies it can be a devastating loss.
Why is it that our pets are so cherished? I think it goes back to the notion of unconditional love. When people disdain you or abandon you, your pet is always there. Your pet doesn’t care what you look like or if you just gained ten pounds. Your pet doesn’t care that you make a ton of money or if you are a success at your job. Your pet will never tell you to “Buck up and get over your depression.” Your pet doesn’t expect you to be anyone but you. They are with you for the good times and the bad times.
One of my favorite cats was like this for me. Don’t laugh but her name was “Puttertat” and she was an indignant looking black and white tuxedo cat full of attitude or shall I say “cattitude?” This cat was there through all my trials and tribulations of my young adulthood. I got her when I was just a teen and living with my mother in a basement apartment. She was there when I was dating my high school sweetheart. She was also there when I broke up with him seven years later. My cat was there through my first minimum wage jobs and also the day I landed the first job of my career. She was there through my many years of schooling: High School, college and even graduate school. She welcomed me home after I got married. And I held her on my lap like a child when I went through years of infertility. She was also there the day I came home from the maternity hospital with my baby boy. And when I became pregnant again with my second son, this is when Puttertat decided that it was time for her to go.
It is always the balance of things for birth and death to coincide. I remember when one of my closest friends was pregnant, her aunt was dying. We all sat on her living room couch together. Her aunt was gaunt and pale, her short gasps made possible through the help of an oxygen tank. And my friend, sitting beside her, was rosy cheeked and bursting with belly. The contrast was both bittersweet and unsettling. I thought of this image when my cat was dying. My belly, full of life, burgeoned out before me as I squatted down and peered into the eyes of a creature who was slowly losing hers. It was absolutely heart breaking. But I was also reminded that life does go on.
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Thanks for sharing the story about your cat, Merely Me. Those tuxedo cats are beautiful.
The two dogs we have now are #3 and #4 since we've been married and will probably be our last because we want to have a little more freedom before we get too old! The part that I find hard about losing a pet is having to make the decision to put them to sleep. Oh, I so wish they could just die in their sleep, but that hardly ever happens. So you go through this agony of deciding when their suffering is too much. Our last dog that we put down was also a Shar Pei and she was 11, so had already hit her life expectancy number, but she started having a few things go wrong, bladder problems, etc., then one day she came into the house with one of her hind legs hanging and we thought maybe she had sprained it. The next day, while I was out, my husband took her to the vet and they found she had blown out her hip, maybe by falling, and that surgery for that was quite painful and probably a real risk at her age, plus the bleeding problem was an unknown cause, could have been a tumor, so he made the decision to have her put to sleep. We cried for a couple of days; we made a little "shrine" for her with her picture and a little statue of a Shar Pei, which we still have.
We did end up getting our next dog a few months later, another Shar Pei, and then another one a year after that. The older of the two, Chloe, is 7 already and is blind from glaucoma; she's acting like an old dog already and she's such a sweetheart, I don't like to think about her probably only having 3 or 4 years left.
When I was 18, we had a 10-year-old lab mutt that we all loved who got attacked by a Great Dane some time during the week. One night we woke up to this God-awful howling in the middle of the night and she was having seizures and sounded like she was rabid. We couldn't go near her, so we closed the door to the hallway where she was lying and listened to this horrible sound. My mother called the vet, told him we couldn't pick her up to take her in and the vet said she was probably going to die shortly, which she did while he was still on the phone. They decided she had probably suffered brain damage from the run-in with the Great Dane. We didn't have to make a decision about putting her to sleep, but I guess when I think about it, that wasn't a whole lot of fun, either - I can still hear that sound 40+ years later.
I really do hope our pets have a heaven to go to, as they probably deserve it way more than we humans do!
Oh my Judy...that is so traumatic about your dog that got mauled. That would tear me up. I am sure that is something you will never forget. I am so sorry.
I know...it is so hard when they get real sick because there almost always is that decision and you feel so bad. You want to know you are doing the right thing. And some vets will use that time to try to get you to go above and beyond what you would even do for a human being. For one cat we spent a couple grand before she died at home. I was so mad that after all our efforts she still died.
Thanks for sharing these painful memories with us...I know it is hard.