Losing an Animal Friend
by Frances Sandiford

Lying in bed at night, I can see Sage’s silhouette perched on my windowsill. Like a sentinel, she’s there for me, a constant companion.

Sage is my twelve-year-old mixed breed cat that I rescued from the SPCA. Having been sequestered in a cage for two long years, her initial reaction after I adopted her was to enjoy her new freedom. But we bonded as we had when I walked down the line of cages where she rubbed her nose against the bars. While she still enjoys the outdoors, she spends more time near me, where we can touch.

Pet owners and their pets share a mysterious magnetism. Unlike a relationship with another person, it is a silent communication built on trust and an innate feeling for each other. At this moment Sage is healthy, and I don’t think about her dying. Given her age, and knowing that an animal’s life is short compared with ours, I know that some day I have to face losing her. This realization hit me a few years ago when I attended a grief counseling session after my husband passed away. Among the men and women who attended, the most vocally distressed by far were those who had lost a beloved pet.

Coincidentally, a recently-published book, Going Home, by writer-photographer Jon Katz, offers guidance for pet owners who have lost their animals. Katz has an unbelievable rapport with animals. He always wants to do the right thing for them. “Animals support us,” he explains. “They provide us with emotional nourishment of the most basic and elemental kind.” I might add that they can heal us when nothing else seems to work. Pets give unrequited love; our responsibility is to feed and care for them, take them to a vet if necessary, and if we have to be away from home, make sure that someone else fills in.

Though there is no socially-sanctioned mourning ritual for the loss of a pet, the overall message of Katz’s book is that we need to mourn for a pet that dies and come to terms with the finality of that end. He even gives suggestions on how to mourn. He also makes two other points that I found especially poignant. First, that not all animals are suitable as pets. Readers who have lived on or near a farm know that farm animals are a commodity, bred to be slaughtered. They do not make the grade as pets.

But Katz didn’t know this in his earlier years. At Bedlam Farm, the small property he owns in upstate New York, he harbors a few select animals. Once the owner of a larger farm nearby asked him to adopt Elvis, a young steer he could not bring himself to send to the slaughterhouse. The steer would follow the farmer around and eat grass from his hands. Katz took in Elvis and tried to integrate him into Bedlam’s sanctuary. But it didn’t work. When all else failed, Katz narrates a tragicomic sequence in which he ships Elvis off to be slaughtered with a marshmallow in his mouth.

Katz points out that it is often the way a pet dies that gives its owner the most grief. A natural death is easier, but many pets have to be euthanized. I can remember being in a vet’s office observing a large dog lying limply in the arms of two tearful adults who had brought him to be put down. I had a hard time getting the picture out of my mind.

The decision to end a pet’s life, Katz explains, lies solely in the hands of the owner. He suggests considering the following points: Is the animal in pain? Can it live a normal life? What will the impact of the animal’s death be on the owners? What is the cost (emotional and financial) of keeping the animal alive? Be confident in your decision, Katz urges, although admitting that euthanizing one of his animals caused him unremitting grief.

The animal that Katz put down was a border collie named Orson. Katz had acquired him in 2000 from a breeder who said that Orson had failed to make it as a show dog. He was, in the author’s words, “intelligent but intense.” In simpler terms, he was uncontrollable. Orson was in good health, but Katz agreed with his vet that the dog had to be put down. The grief caused by this decision colors every page of his book. Why did it have to happen, Katz asks, but knows already that there is no real answer.

Katz offers the Internet as a place to find possible comfort after the loss of a pet. Here you can contact groups or even single people in the same pain of mourning. Mourn, and then pull back, counsels Katz, who concludes his book with an appeal to grieving pet owners, as soon as they are ready, to get a new pet. Many dogs and cats need good homes. Although the new pet may not be quite the same as the one who died, in time it will be there for you too.

I look back at Sage on my windowsill, and delight in the here and now.

Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die, by Jon Katz, was published in September by Villard Books (Random House). Hardcover, 192 pages, $22.