On Losing a Pet: Part One

If you look on the “about me” tab on this blog, you’ll see that I describe myself as having “too many pets.”  We currently have 2 dogs and 3 cats.  Four of the five pets are part of a relatively new crop, joining the family in just the past year. We’ve been having some problems integrating everybody, so it’s been a bit…messy.  There has been a constant stream of unpleasant surprises, and the phrase “too many pets” has been running through my mind quite a bit lately.

Although these surprises have added a great deal of stress to our home (a.k.a. “the house of excrement,”), we do love our furry friends.  We’ve clearly acquired too many, too quickly, and may have over-extended ourselves.  It happened as a result of our having to say goodbye to one, then another, and then finally the last of our “starter” kitties, all of whom were acquired in the previous century.  Apparently, we wanted to make sure we had an adequate supply of fur and love.

That’s the thing about animals.  They bring so much to your life.  And then they die.

The death of a pet brings up some interesting issues: Their lifespans are so much shorter than ours (unless you have a parrot), that chances are you will have to suffer their passing.  Though, of course, sometimes pets outlive their owners, which is another issue.  For many children, the death of a pet is often their first major loss, and can color their perspective on death for the rest of their lives.  Our relationships with pets are often uncomplicated ones, which can make us feel their deaths all that much more.  Yet I think a lot of us feel uncomfortable grieving in the same way that we do for humans–our society isn’t really set up to handle the death of a pet the same way it handles the death of a family member.    And, of course, while euthanasia is a very sticky issue in the human world, it’s the norm in the animal one.  And while that affords us much more control, it also forces us to literally decide when our loved one is going to die.

And so for the next couple of weeks or so I’m going to write about some of  these issues.  Thanks to those of you on Facebook who suggested this (if you go to my page here, you can see a picture of Otto, our pug.  Handsome, isn’t he?).

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To get us started, if you’ll indulge me, I will share one of my own experiences:

I adopted my first cat when I was in college, and have had a steady stream of cats and dogs ever since.  Lucy, though, was my favorite.  She was a little shy and skittish around other people, but she would always come and curl up to snuggle when I most needed her to.  I felt we could commune with our eyes, and that we loved each other unconditionally.

Several years back, as part of a fellowship in Medical Ethics,  I participated in an activity led by the “death-and-dying lady.”  Our task was to list all of the living beings we loved (including animals).  We then had select one to be taken away from us. And then another, and another, until they were all taken.  (Figuratively, of course.)

I didn’t yet have a child to put on the list, but I did have a spouse and all of my family to put on there.  What makes that exercise memorable for me is where I put Lucy on it.   I am fortunate to still have all of my immediate family living, and I am fairly certain that they make up most of my readership (and I don’t come from a large family).  So I won’t go into details.  But I will say that I kept Lucy with me until pretty close to the end.

I now have children, and my love for them has eclipsed my love for any four-legged creature that has been, is, or will be in my life.  I can’t really describe the love that I have for my girls–it is so deep and far-reaching that at times I find it staggering.  And perhaps because they are young, it is uncomplicated and incredibly fulfilling. (That isn’t to say that it won’t continue to be, but I have heard a story or two about the pre-teen years and beyond.)

Regardless,  I was a mother of two when Lucy’s time was drawing to an end–much earlier than I had her slated to be taken on my little list–and I did not have an easy time of it.  For a couple of years I had convinced my husband to foot the bills for constant vet visits and managed to master the art (to an extent) of giving her sub-cutaneous fluids.  She hated them, but she still seemed to enjoy life more than she hated getting the fluids, so we kept going.  But then, finally, it wasn’t working any more, and she was clearly at the end.  I couldn’t stop crying as she let me hold her little emaciated body through that last night.  The next day I dropped my older daughter off at preschool and arranged for a friend to pick her up. I walked into the vet’s office with my infant daughter’s car carrier in one hand and Lucy’s crate in the other.  The vet was kind and gentle, and Lucy was barely alive.  She was gone within seconds of the injection.  My daughter’s little head soaked up my tears as I held her close for support.  I was pretty devastated by Lucy’s death.  But, I had a child to pick up and lunch to make and laundry to do.  It’s not like the world suddenly gives you space to indulge in your grief.  You don’t even have a funeral to plan.  You might call a few people or send an email out, but then you have to get on with it.

Lucy has been gone five years and I still miss her.  I can imagine resting my head on her soft little body, listening to her purr.  I lost someone who understood me completely, who brought me nothing but joy.  It’s a little hole that will probably never be filled.

We’ve said goodbye to several more pets since then.  My older daughter actually came with me to put our last cat down.  As sad as it was, the whole experience really went a long way in helping her process her grief, and I think it removed some of the fear surrounding death for her.

Of course, wandering into Petco the next day and adopting a younger lookalike (and his accompanying case of ringworm) helped a lot, too.  You can’t really do that when people die.

So, next week I’ll write more about some of these issues that surround the death of a beloved pet.  If you have a comment or suggestion or story that you want to share, please do so in in the link below this post.  And, as always, thanks for reading.