The Death Of A Pet

By Tom Poland

The day after Christmas was cold and gray. Rain softened the hard red clay of Georgia, a good thing. With pick and shovel in hand I walked over wet, silent oak leaves to the burial site for family pets. Socks the cat was no more. Aged, frail, and no longer able to eat or drink, his time had come. That ninth life floated away when the veterinarian put Socks to sleep.

A black cat, Socks had white feet, so Dad named him Socks. Dad found Socks wandering around, a stray. Over the years my folks rescued so many cats and dogs we were sure people were dumping them out near the highway, knowing they would have a good home.

Dad died in 2003, so a bit of math calculates that Socks was twenty-three. The Purina cat age calculator only goes to nineteen and that equates to 92 human years, so Socks was over 100. He looked it. Gaunt, weak … a ghost of the vibrant cat he had been. He and his fallen comrade, Tiger, gave Mom an important presence after Dad died. Much of her ritualistic day was spent tending to the cats. Treats just before bedtime, for instance.

Mom died in 2015 and one of her wishes was that Socks remain in her home. Socks became the sole resident, the overseer. Now, for the first time in seventy years no living thing occupies the house.

It’s hard to explain why the death of a pet hurts more than that of a loved one, but it’s true. A long time ago, I had a dog. She was a Pekingese, fiercely loyal, and would fight a mountain lion for me. In her ninth year, I had to let her go. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. That was thirty-two years ago. I’ve not had a dog since.

For a while, I had two cats, Flake and Ace. Flake, a snow-white beautiful cat departed this world one morning at the vet’s clinic to take her place in the heaven of Animals. God bless her perfect little soul. She was my steadfast companion, always by my side at my desk when I was writing. Obedient, loving, and loyal. Later, her sister, Ace, passed on. No pets anymore for this Georgia boy. I know what I am missing but the plain truth is it hurts too much when they die. We’re all just passing through this world but while we’re here pets make it worth all the trouble. The passing of family pets makes me recall eloquent words written by John Dunne, words that gave Hemingway the title for his novel. You can substitute the word “cat” or “dog” every time “man” occurs in the passage below.

No man is an island, entire of itself; If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; it shows he is a citizen of the world, If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, and that his heart is no island as well as if a promontory were, cut off from other lands, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; but a continent that joins to them. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. —John Dunne (1572-1631)

The bell tolled for Socks, the cat that liked to take your hair in his mouth, and my sisters and I felt diminished.

The rain made the digging of Sock’s grave easy in one sense. In another it was hard for Sock’s passing brought back images of Mom doting on him. She’d talk to him sweetly, as if he were a child.

We like to think that loved ones are reunited in death, but really I just don’t know about that. Still, I will say they are all together now and that’s Sock’s death was timely, a Christmas gift to Mom and Dad … somewhere over that rainbow bridge.

As I dug through roots, just before I got to that legendary red clay, the shovel turned up a broken Dalton point. Socks would be sleeping in a grave where a man passed through some 7,500 years ago. As all sojourners do. Just pass through.

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Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”