It's Now Public: Pet Owners Do Cry
September 9, 2001
by Julie V. Iovinen
New York Times
Stahlstown, Pa. -- Carol Boerio-Croft coped with losing
Murphy, her Irish Wolfhound, by making a documentary film. The dog died of a
spinal tumor in April 2000, and the film, called "Murphy's Last Chance," about
how Ms. Boerio-Croft spent $85,000 and eight months fighting nature's course,
has been shown regularly on the cable channel Animal Planet ever since.
On NBC's "Today" show on Friday, Peter Gethers,
a writer, fought back tears while promoting "The Cat Who'll Live
Forever" (Broadway Books), his new memoir detailing the last
days of Norton, his best-selling cat. Norton's passing in May
1999 has already been recorded in People magazine (and in the
Public Lives column in The New York Times).
Not so long ago, grieving for a pet was a
hush-hush affair. The death itself happened on the road, in a
veterinarian's office or out behind the barn with the aid of a
firearm. At best, a cardboard box in the backyard — the
rendering plant more likely — was the standard vehicle for body
disposal. Anyone who did differently, or seemed unduly
distraught, was dismissed as a lonely fanatic.
Today, pet bereavement is serious business.
There are support groups and grief counselors dedicated to the
subject, not to mention heart-twanging memoirs, self-help videos
and commemorative Websites. You have your custom-built coffins,
your urns, your limited-edition prints — even mausoleums built
for two, to house the cremated remains of pet and pet owner
forever after. The British novelist Evelyn Waugh may have
thought he was treading on safe ground when he trounced the pet
cemetery business in "The Loved One," his savagely funny 1948
satire dishing, among other oddities, pet "eternalization" at
the Happier Hunting Grounds. But he was only ahead of a trend.
The pet mortuary industry is experiencing
enormous growth. In 1972, there were 96 pet cemeteries; today
there are about 700, according to the International Association
of Pet Cemeteries in Ellenburg, N.Y. "Attitudes have
dramatically changed toward pet burial and cremation," said Ed
Martin, a director of the 105-year- old Hartsdale Pet Cemetery
in Westchester County, the country's oldest dedicated cemetery
for animals. "People were once much more guarded about the fact
they were doing something with their pet. Basically, the vet
said, 'We'll take care of it,' and put the body out with the
garbage."
Mr. Martin, who has worked at Hartsdale for 27
years, estimated that since 1991 there has been a tenfold
increase in the number of people willing to do "more than they
have to," as he put it, when a pet dies. Hartsdale conducts
about 10,000 burials and individual cremations (as opposed to
communal ones) each year, ranging in cost from about $400 to
$1,200, a sum that buys an ornate satin- or velvet-lined oak
coffin and a monument.
September 14th is National Pet Memorial Day,
the occasion for pet cemeteries across the country to honor
departed furry and feathered loved ones in ceremonies running
the gamut from the sympathetic to the macabre. In West Chicago
at the Paw Print Gardens cemetery — owned by Pat Blosser,
executive director of the pet cemeteries association — the day
will include a demonstration by a bomb- and drug-sniffing dog
squad, a big hit last year. Contraband, usually marijuana, is
planted on someone by a member of the local police department,
and the dogs are let loose to find it. "It usually goes into
some lady's purse and she screams in surprise," said Ms. Blosser,
who founded Pet Memorial Day in 1972. "It makes for a lovely
day."
At Hartsdale, there will be a "Blessing of the
Animals" service, open to the public, with an interfaith
minister. About 300 animal devotees are expected.
The reasons for the apparently bottomless well
of pet devotion are economic and historical, as well as
psychological. Animal indulgences from diamond-studded collars
to therapeutic pet massage have been made possible by a decade
of prosperity, especially among the upper classes, a
traditionally animal-adoring crowd. At the same time, the
agrarian past, with its more pragmatic attitudes toward
livestock, is receding from memory. Another important factor is
the well-documented breakup of the traditional family, which has
left many people living alone and looking for love. Pets provide
the intimate satisfaction of needs easily met, constant
companionship and a physical presence that gratifies on an
almost primal level. Or so say many distressed pet owners trying
to understand why they are overwhelmed when Snuggles passes
away. Their plight has spawned an elaborate support system.
"It's a lot nicer to be met at the door by a wagging tail than
an empty home or a husband who isn't talking or children who are
screaming," said Meryl Koopersmith, a psychotherapist (for
humans) in Manhattan, who says she isn't at all surprised by the
increasing number of clients mourning for lost pets. "People who
don't have other intense love objects can become intensely
attached," she said.
Patricia Benton, a certified social worker and
director of bereavement services at the Hospice of Orange and
Sullivan in Newburgh, N.Y., has noticed more calls from the
pet-bereaved. She talks to them as she would any bereaved
client, but not without reservations. "I think because of our
wealth, our material surplus, we can treat these animals as if
they were our children," Ms. Benton said, "but some people are
just so fixated on that animal that they run into trouble,
because it's not an accurate perception of the animal."
She says she sometimes gets strange looks from
her colleagues at the hospice. "I'll get off the phone and
someone will say in disbelief, 'You're talking like that about a
cat?' " she said, "But the grief is so real and so deep, you
have to acknowledge it."
Dedicated in life, devastated by death, humans
seem to go through the same stages of grief over losing a pet
that they might in losing a human, but with a slight twist: the
sadness is intensified by guilt when euthanasia is involved, and
there might also be embarrassment at not being able to get over
it quickly. Increasingly, for the articulate at least, grief
might even lead to a book deal.
Online booksellers like dogwise.com and
Amazon.com list dozens of books on the subject. There's the
self-published "bereavement set" by Mary and Herb Montgomery,
"Goodbye My Friend" (1991), in its 15th printing, and "A Final
Act of Caring" (1993), in its sixth. There's also the elegiac
memoir "Home Waters: Fishing With an Old Friend" (Chronicle) by
Joseph Monninger, recounting the author's last fishing trip with
his 11-year-old retriever, Nellie, after her cancer had been
diagnosed.
Peter Gethers and his gray cat, Norton, were
already a publishing phenomenon. The annals of the inseparable
duo are recorded in two books published by Crown, "The Cat Who
Went to Paris" (1991) and "A Cat Abroad" (1993), best sellers
both, with more than a total of 150,000 sold. Then Norton, 13,
became ill; three years later he died in Mr. Gethers's arms."
Writing a third book about my cat was the last
thing on my mind," Mr. Gethers said on Tuesday as he prepared
for an eight-city book tour on behalf of "The Cat Who'll Live
Forever." But thousands of e-mail messages and letters changed
his mind.
(From The New York Times, September 9, 2001)
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