Goodbye, Sweet Aries: Watching Someone's Gravity Shift

Recently, my brother had to put his dog down.  This may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people.  But they've had the dog for over 14 years.  His kids grew up with Aries being the center of their home, the heart of their family.  As they moved around, as their world hit several snags, as they grew up and left home, they still looked to Aries to show them what love was.  One of my nephews shared custody with his dad and took Aries home every other week.  He was the very center of gravity for all of them. 

Then came the day a tumor started to grow on his nose.  When they took him to a vet, they were told that surgery was not a very viable option, especially for an elderly dog.  They watched his medical problems get worse and worse with some concern.  But 14 is fairly old for a large dog.  Without a huge financial expenditure, there was not much anyone could do.  Even then, things looked iffy. 

They held onto him for as long as they could because they knew how much his loss would hurt.  When they took him in, he wagged his tail until the end, trusting and loving them into the beyond.  Some of them have seen his spirit as he's continued to watch over them. 

But that doesn't stop the pain.  For most of them, it feels like a child or their best friend has died.  I held my adult nephew (who never cries) as he sobbed out his pain onto my shoulder.  A piece of their soul, the unifying force in their divided family, is nowhere they can see him.  I've had pets die.  I've had people in fur die (animals that have become more than just a pet, more like a companion or a best friend).  But I've never been rocked to my soul quite as much as I saw in my brother's family. 

When I saw their pain, I thought of my own.  We sat and cried together.  I know you can't compare one kind of loss (that of a child) to another (a furbaby).  But there's a kinship, a connection, that can be made between those who have lost, regardless of what the loss is.  I don't think I would have understood their loss like I do without my own.  I can be grateful for the empathy I've learned that allows me to be there for them and cry with them. 

Near loss

We lost a dog a couple of weeks ago, as you may have read.  This week, we thought we lost another four-legged friend.  A cat knocked over a cage, shattering it, then attacked our sweet baby bearded dragon.  We found the dragon, looking shaken and acting near death on the floor.  We've only had her for about a month, but I've already grown quite attached to her.  I was sure she was going to die that night.  I held her, hoping she would not die.  The next morning, my boy reported she was dead for so she seemed to be.  We mourned her.  The thoughts of what I could have done to avoid another death haunted me as we tried to do fun, family activities that day.  That night, my boy discovered the beardie was actually alive.  She's acting now like she's going to live.  We view her survival as a miracle.

This may seem like a trivial incident to an outsider, but it was not to us.  It is a frightening thing to come so near loss of any sort after suffering so much of it.  I think that's true of anyone who has had a series of losses.  There are few things in life more frightening than the fear of more pain associated with loss.  We're breathing easier now that we know she'll be okay.  But I still feel shaken with the reminder that pain can come at any time, in any way, even from unexpected sources.

Filling the Hole with Fluffies

I've thought a lot about my love of pets.  When I was a kid, I think I loved cats so much because I never got enough attention from Mom.  There were seven of us, and I always felt a little lost in the middle.  So I turned to cats to fill that hole.  

Now, I'm older.  I don't think I'm filling the parental hole in my life.  I think what I've done instead is fill the hole not having a baby has left in my life.  When my husband and I first got married, we had a rational two cats.  Okay, the cats weren't rational, but the number of pets was.  For the first few years of our marriage as we had one child then another, we added a few more here and there, mostly to entertain the kids.  The cats were the love of my little girl's life.  The hamster was to keep my boy happy when we were about to have another girl instead of a boy.  [It took us pretty much the whole hamster's life to finally admit that whereas we had tried to get a boy hamster, so he didn't feel the imbalance in the force quite as much, we only ended up tipping it female just a bit more.]  We got a bearded dragon because my boy was all about dinosaurs, and that was as close as we could get.  We got fish because the kids found them fascinating and pretty to watch.  

But then, after Alli died, our pet population exploded: cats [now five], rats [several, now down to zero], dogs [one then two then three and back to two again], guinea pigs [two, though that phase passed quickly when the stunk up the house and woke my girl every morning with their squealing], snakes [several at one point because my boy loves snakes], ducks [sold], bunnies [we've gone through several over the years and are now down to two that we rescued], chickens [12 at one point, but the raccoons wiped out so many that we only have a few left], lizards [still have two], frogs [all gone], goats [sold as soon as they ran away one too many times], and I'm sure I'm missing one or two more.  But we've had an insane number of pets.  Part of it was because the kids wanted to try out this animal or that one.  

But I think a bigger part of it was because I was filling a hole.  I couldn't go out and buy a baby, but I could go out and buy a baby, but I could go out and buy something else to care for like a snake or a bunny or a chicken.  But none of them scratched the itch.  None filled the hole.  So I slowly pared down to a few cats, two dogs, a couple of lizards, two bunnies, and a handful of chickens.  That still may sound like a lot, but it's sane compared to what it was, and the greater part of the population stays outdoors.  The cats do the best job of filling the hole left by babies because they're snuggly and warm and like to be held.  But I have had to come to terms with the idea that animals just cannot be what I want them to be.  However, I can be what they need me to be, which is their caretaker who gives them the attention/food/water/etc. they need.  It's good to identify what's happening, so I can seek my solace elsewhere and let the animals be whatever they want and need to be.