A Different Kind of Animal
One is a cat owner, and the other has a dog. Both recently shared how difficult it will be when their pets die. They will need some downtime and space to adjust and grieve. Both thought that it might not be possible to return to work the next day.
In another conversation, an older man, older than me, shared how he still misses his dog. They had a routine, and he misses that routine and his dog's presence in his life and in his home.
There was a younger woman, younger than me, who talked about how the death of her cat impacted her life more than the death of her grandmother. She wasn't suggesting that her cat's life was greater than the worth of her grandmother's life, but she understood that her cat was part of her everyday life in a way that her grandmother was not. The void left behind by her cat impacted her mornings, evenings, days, and nights in persistent and personal ways unlike any other relationship.
When we got married, we had a cat. He was warm and funny but wasn't a very bright cat. He repeatedly would run around the carpeted areas of our apartment and then skid into the kitchen table when he got to the linoleum. He struggled with the concept of the litter box. One day, I left our apartment and took a personal time-out when I discovered that he had used my closet as his little box and also thrown up in my shoes. When he died with feline leukemia, I was deeply and surprisingly moved.
There are so many stories about the profound impact that our animal companions have on us with both their lives and their deaths. Many social media posts are shared about "crossing the rainbow bridge" and the gracious and kind expressions of sympathy and condolence that follow in response. Many in the "great cloud of witnesses" of our lives have four feet, feathers, more than four feet, fins, or no feet at all.
What is it about our pets that can impact us so significantly, and why are these relationships and losses often still minimized?
We are wired for connection, and the relationships that we develop with our animal companions are real relationships. The more they are wired for connection, too, the greater potential for meaning in our relationships with them. Relationships blur the boundaries between two lives. It is not just me and another, there is an us together. We watch and are aware of each other, communicate with sound, expressions, and touch, and respond to what we see, hear, and feel. For so many of us, our relationships with our pets are a constant presence and comfort, grounding us when so much in the rest of our lives may be in flux and sometimes feeling out of control.
Animals are not people, but we as people are not limited to connections with only our own kind. We form deep bonds with seemingly inanimate objects like our homes, our cars and trucks, and our many things. While these things may have no pulse or ways of responding personally (but people have stories otherwise), we endow them with meaning, and they can matter deeply to us. Plants and trees are not people or animals, but they respond to their environments, and we respond to them. We make and nurture relationships in all aspects of our lives.
Interestingly, we don't question our ability to have deep relationships with infants even as they lack language and respond in limited ways compared to the breadth and depth of responsiveness with typical adults. Our relationships with infants are not dependent on them growing into typical adults. We connect with them how they are and where they are no matter what their future holds. And we do this with our animal companions, too.
Part of the reason we struggle with giving relationships with our pets the weight that they deserve is a struggle with language. We often say "pet owner," but is "own" the best word? "Own" has too much of the suggestion of our pets as objects with no independent lives and dignity of their own. We don't refer to parents as "child owners" as doing so would reduce children to property. We have a responsibility to our pets more as stewards and friends, perhaps caring for them as older brothers or sisters.
There is no need to rank the relationships we have with other people, living things, or anything which lives in our hearts. Our philosophy and approach can be one of addition rather than competition. Each relationship in our lives is unique and has its own meaning which can change and grow over time. Our animal companions mean things to us, and we mean things to them. These meanings are more than transactional-we do this for them, they do this for us, end of story. The stories of our lives with animals are much more than this.
The bonds we make and experience with animals are not solely of our own creation. They are something that happens between us as we both initiate and respond to and with each other. These are real relationships, and so when our animal companion dies, it is a real loss with real grief. Such losses deserve the time and work of mourning and support from others.
We are making progress with how we think about and support pet loss. Increasingly, losses of our animal companions are recognized and affirmed rather than disenfranchised. More and more we are not saying "just a pet." We can say our dog or our cat, and better yet, we can say their name. For they had a name as surely as they had a home in our hearts.
Greg Adams, LCSW, ACSW, FT
Program Coordinator
Center for Good Mourning
goodmourning@archildrens.org
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