Good grief, p.13
Good Grief, page 13
But of course, people knew and loved celebrity animals long before Instagram—just look at how many people turned out for Man o’ War’s funeral in the 1940s—and sometimes nothing quite beats a real live connection. Before Puppy and I left Kentucky, driving down Man o’ War Boulevard to the Lexington airport—yes, the city of Lexington named its main road after its favorite dead racehorse—we had one last stop to see a particular live horse. John, our tour guide, drove Puppy and me to Ashford Stud, where we had an appointment with a celebrity. My grandfather has a friend who owns some shares of a very famous thoroughbred. John drove us through the gated farm entrance, and then we waited. You can’t rush a celebrity. We stood in the hot June sun. I found some more horse graves to look at. Puppy and John reviewed the highlights of the past few days. A stable hand brought out Giant’s Causeway, another legendary horse; we took some photos with him so as not to make him feel bad, but he wasn’t the one we were there to see.
And then, finally, there he was: 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.
I remember where I was when he won. It was June 6, 2015, and I was at my five-year college reunion. One of my best friends from Wellesley, Cary, suggested we take a break from the afternoon cookout to turn on her laptop so we could watch the Belmont Stakes. Cary grew up riding horses in Virginia, and she had closely followed American Pharoah’s wins the preceding weeks at the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. If the horse won this final race, she emphasized, he would be the first winner of the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978. We gathered around her laptop in a dorm room, peering at the tiny screen, sipping warm beers. At the opening of the gates, Cary gritted her teeth—American Pharoah didn’t have a strong start. The horse and the jockey seemed lost in the pack, and to my untrained eye it looked like it could be anyone’s race. But within twenty seconds American Pharoah had pushed his way forward. Cary took in a sharp breath, and I found myself tightly clutching my can, eyes on the video stream. The thoroughbred surged forward, and forward, until, a minute and a half in, he was ahead by three-quarters of a length, then a full length, and then two lengths. I felt like I was watching footage of Secretariat all over again. I remembered the ancient Egyptian belief that animals occupy the space between the human world and the divine, and as the bay stallion soared ahead to the finish line, ending the thirty-seven-year Triple Crown drought, I couldn’t help but think I was watching a creature not of this earth. Cary screamed as American Pharoah crossed the wire, and I found myself crying. I had never met this horse, I didn’t know this horse, but something about watching him run, about seeing that victorious win, the realization that I was witnessing part of history in the middle of a Saturday afternoon on my college campus—I felt overwhelmed by emotion. Cary would later describe watching American Pharoah’s Belmont win as “one of the most magical days of the last decade.”
All of those feelings hit me again as the groom led American Pharoah out to meet me and Puppy. My grandfather didn’t think twice. He got right in there, patting the famous horse’s mane. (For the rest of the day he would crow, “I never thought I would touch a Triple Crown winner!”) But I didn’t follow Puppy’s lead. I held back, frozen. I was in awe. Overwhelmed. I would spend the rest of the day kicking myself, thinking, I can’t believe I didn’t touch a Triple Crown winner. But I had been paralyzed. I kept flashing back to that footage of him flying fast at the Belmont, so far ahead of all the other horses. Despite the hot Kentucky summer sun, I was chilled.
“He knows he is a champion,” Puppy’s friend had said of the Triple Crown winner. He really does. American Pharoah is calm, confident. He’s the hot guy at the party who knows he’s the most attractive person in the room. He turned his head slowly and looked into my eyes. I stopped, arrested by his athletic beauty. Maybe I was a little bit afraid to touch an animal worth that much money—American Pharoah’s stud fee is $200,000. But more than that, I know that I was overcome by the thrill of celebrity. I suddenly got why millions of people came to see Man o’ War in his retirement years at Faraway Farms. I already understood the idea of making a pilgrimage to a grave or a memorial to pay respect—people need closure. But I was blown away when I saw American Pharoah. So handsome, so athletic, so alive. His muscles rippled. I could see the air moving through his nostrils, his chest rising and falling. He focused a steady brown-eyed gaze in my direction. Maybe seeing a famous live animal was even better than seeing the grave of a famous dead one. Maybe it was just the contrast of seeing American Pharoah, so very alive, so well, so clearly breathing, after spending two days studying the graves of very dead horses. He was a glowing specimen of health. He was a spark of energy, some Mother Nature magic. The entirety of my notes from our visit to Ashford Stud consists of one sentence: American Pharoah is so beautiful. Perhaps I was afraid to touch him because of the overwhelming life that pulsed through him. Or maybe I didn’t touch him because I didn’t want to get attached—at least, not even more attached. Because I already knew, as Puppy rubbed his hands all over the horse’s mane, that one day American Pharoah would die, and I would grieve for him.
7
Felines & Feelings
ABOUT FIFTEEN YEARS after Chuckie died on my watch, Meri sent a text: “Look what I got at the farmers’ market!” I expected a bouquet of fresh sunflowers or a jar of local honey or a particularly beautiful piece of broccoli. Instead she sent a photo of a kitten. The hamster kid was now a cat lady.
“His name is Clark! Because I got him at Clark Park,” she explained. Meri was living in Philadelphia at the time for grad school, near a place called, apparently, Clark Park.
“Aw!” I texted back. Little did I know I had just met my new nemesis.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I don’t like cats. I just never learned how to be at ease around them. While my mom is super allergic to dogs, her cat allergies are basically fatal. I never even tried for a kitten. Growing up, some of my aunts had cats, some of my friends had cats, I even get along pretty well with one particular feline named Buster, though he acts a lot like a dog—but it wasn’t quite enough for me to understand how they work.
So when Meri got Clark, I didn’t have a lot of cat experience. But I had hope. I love animals, right? I’ve had so many pets, right? How hard could it be to get a cat to love me or for me to love a cat?
But then I met Clark.
Clark is a brown-and-black striped cat, a Bengal variety, sleek and elegant, with the looks of a small jungle tiger, and he acts like one, too. The first time I met him was when I went to visit Meri in Philadelphia for her birthday with our friends Tuck and Liz. Tuck and Liz slept on an air mattress on the floor of Meri’s living room, and I curled up in her bowl chair, and, let me tell you, Clark did not like having new people in his house. In particular, he seemed to have a problem with all the extra toes hanging around. No one slept at all that weekend as Clark systematically attacked our feet, over and over, all night long. I felt in my chest something I’d never felt toward a pet. Was this . . . hate?
It was safe to say that everyone was a little afraid of Clark, and Clark didn’t seem to like anyone except Meri—but he could even turn on her. Meri once startled him coming into the kitchen for a glass of water and Clark scratched at her face, slashing the skin above her eye. Clark was wild, had attitude, and was quick to bite. But all that changed when Meri’s mom got sick.
Dori was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014. Dori, who had so gracefully handled the dead-hamster phone call, who commiserated with my mom over having pets just for the sake of their daughters, who had been like an aunt to me, was sick. Everything about Dori having cancer was awful. Except that Clark was transformed.
Meri moved back in with her parents to help take care of her mom, and she brought Clark with her. The dogs that Dori and Meri’s dad, Steve, adopted after Meri’s childhood dog Jasper died—Dudley and Albie—were both gentle and kind to Dori throughout her treatment. After dinner, they would sit on her lap for hours at a time. Even Albie, who had behavioral problems, stayed calm when he was with Dori.
“Suddenly he won’t leave my side,” Dori told my mom about the dog. It would be the last phone call they had before Dori died. “Usually Albie only has eyes for Steve, but he’s always next to me now.” She paused. “He knows something’s wrong.”
But dogs are known for things like that. They’re loyal, they’re kind—think of those Saint Bernards pulling people out of snowdrifts in the Alps. Dogs can even be trained to sniff out cancer cells and the coronavirus. Cats are not known for any of these qualities. And yet Albie and Dudley’s sensitivity and compassion were nothing compared with Clark’s.
Wild, fierce, unpredictable Clark spent every evening on Dori’s side of the bed. When Dori was downstairs, he stayed in the spot, as if keeping it warm for her return. But even more remarkable than that: when Meri and Dori sat together watching television or talking or reading, Clark would snuggle with Dori. Meri had always been the only person he showed any affection for, but suddenly he chose Dori over her. Dori was a little bit hesitant at first—she knew what Clark was like—but eventually she relaxed. Clark kept her warm, calm, and comfortable. The devil cat with a heart of gold.
And here’s the part I think about most: when Dori went to the hospital one day in April 2016, Clark immediately stopped his bed-warming routine. Meri and her dad didn’t realize this would be the end for Dori—Meri went to work that morning thinking everything was fine—but somehow Clark sensed Dori wasn’t coming back. She died in the hospital that night, just over two years after her diagnosis, and Clark knew right away. That first night without Dori, Clark turned his attention back to Meri. He warmed her bed instead; he cuddled with her every night. He seemed to know that it was Meri who needed him now.
Marc Bekoff writes in his book Strolling with Our Kin that “in order to talk about the world of other animals, we have to use whatever language we speak.” I understand this to mean that if we want to describe animal behaviors, our only choice is to use the words we have at our disposal, the same words we use to describe human feelings and actions. In Clark’s case, I saw him showing kindness, being affectionate, acting protective. Scientists who study animals work hard not to use such anthropomorphic language when talking about other species; they try not to project human feelings and attitudes onto their subjects. I understand this—how can we ever really know what another being is thinking, or how their brain works, or how they understand the world? It seems unfair to burden other species with all of our human baggage.
But at the same time, it’s natural to look at a fellow creature and try to figure them out based on what you know and feel yourself. As Leslie Irvine writes in If You Tame Me, “all human attempts to understand and describe any phenomena occur from the human point of view.” When your dog goes running up to a friend you haven’t seen in a long time, you say, “She’s so happy to see you!” What you’re really saying is “I’m so happy to see you!” It’s also just fun to do: “Omg my cat loves pizza!” or “My iguana is really moody today!” You can write scripts for them, make up stories, develop whole plotlines. I can’t count the number of times I’ve overheard a person in a park say, “Ooh, someone has a crush!” about two dogs that are playing together. It’s weird, but it’s joyful. And until our pets can learn to speak our language (or we learn theirs), our own words are the best thing we’ve got to understand the situation.
To that end, in How Animals Grieve, Barbara King shares stories she’s gathered as an anthropologist about the grief or, at least, grief-like behaviors of animals. King writes of a cat, Willa, who fell into terrible distress after her cat-sister, Carson, died. Willa and Carson spent the entirety of their lives together, and they slept curled in toward each other, two half moons. King describes Willa’s response when Carson became sick and died: “With a glance at the soft, warm cushion, she lets out a wail . . . She looks, and looks; another wail escapes her. It’s sudden and terrible, not a noise one would expect from a cat.”
Grief between animals can transcend species. In Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, Sigrid Nunez describes Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s pet monkey, Mitz, appearing listless and melancholy after the death of the Woolfs’ dog, Pinka. Several animal websites reported a story about a cat named Scout Kitty who became deeply bonded to the family dog, Charlie, when she was a kitten. She could sleep only when cuddled up next to him. They would eat together, play together, nap together. When Charlie died of cancer, Scout seemed lost and sad. Her owner put videos of Charlie on an iPad and set it up in the dog’s old bed. Scout now watches the videos of Charlie and then curls up in the bed next to the iPad to sleep.
King also writes of Tarra, an elephant at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. For eight years her best friend was a little stray dog named Bella. The giant elephant and the tiny dog roamed the sanctuary grounds as a pair, inseparable, and they became sensations because of their extreme size difference. They were even featured in several picture books. Tarra and Bella didn’t seem to care—friendship can transcend size, shape, color, and species. But as King points out, with great love comes great grief. Bella was killed one night, seemingly by a pack of coyotes. Tarra found her friend’s body and carried it back to the barn. After the staff of the Elephant Sanctuary buried Bella, they regularly found evidence that Tarra would visit her grave—fresh elephant dung, DNA-matched to Tarra, and an elephant footprint directly over the small dog’s final resting place. Elephants are known to visit and spend time with one another’s corpses, laying branches and leaves and soil on the dead elephant’s body—Tarra was treating Bella as she would a tiny elephant.
These are all examples of animals that seemed to act as equals—siblings, friends, colleagues. There are cases of animals grieving their offspring; an orca known as Tahlequah or J35 mourned her calf, pushing along her baby’s body with the rest of the pod for seventeen days. And sometimes, it seems, an animal can have a pet of its own. Koko the gorilla was born in 1971 and died in 2018, as I was writing this book. On her birthday in July 1984, Koko was allowed to choose a kitten from a litter as her present. She picked out a gray-and-white little guy, whom she named All Ball because apparently the gorilla thought the kitten looked like a little ball, and she liked to rhyme words in sign language. Koko and All Ball were inseparable—somehow the kitten was not afraid of the 230-pound gorilla, and the two would chase each other around Koko’s enclosure for at least an hour every day. But one day, All Ball escaped from the research facility and ended up on a nearby highway, where she was struck and killed by a car. When the researchers explained to Koko what had happened, the gorilla expressed what seemed like denial about the loss of her pet. “She acted like she didn’t hear us for about ten minutes,” said biologist Ron Cohn. “Then she started whimpering—a distinct hooting sound that gorillas make when they are sad. We all started crying together.” Koko clearly understood that her kitten friend was not coming back to her, though it is unclear whether she understood it as death. “Sleep cat,” Koko gestured once she’d stopped crying. Not that different from how little kids understand death: Your pet is now sleeping, forever.
And of course, if animals can mourn across species, they can mourn the loss of humans, too. Humans generally outlive their pets—we have longer life spans—but pets are at times left behind to do the mourning instead. “Dogs are the best mourners in the world, as everyone knows,” writes author Joy Williams. Arguably the most famous canine mourner in ancient literature appears in The Odyssey. Odysseus has been off fighting in the ten-year Trojan War and then, on his way back, he gets sidetracked for another ten years, keeping him away from home for a cool two decades. All kinds of shenanigans have been going down in Ithaca while Odysseus has been away—his son, Telemachus, has grown into an angsty young man; his wife, Penelope, has been fighting off aggressive suitors; and, most importantly, Odysseus’s loyal dog Argos has been hanging on, waiting for his owner to return. When Odysseus finally makes it back to Ithaca, he returns to the city in disguise (long story), and the only one to recognize him is Argos. The dog has been lying on piles of mule and cattle dung for decades, and when he finally sees Odysseus, he is too weak and old to stand, but he drops his ears and wags his tail.* But here’s the kicker: Odysseus notices Argos, flicks away a single tear, and then keeps on going, because he doesn’t want to give away his disguise. And with that Argos dies. Either Argos was so happy to see his person again that he died from joy, or he was so devastated that Odysseus couldn’t say hey after two decades that he died from heartbreak. Or he was just really old. But in any case, he held that vigil for Odysseus, mourning his owner’s absence, for twenty whole years. While some may argue with the use of the words “devastated” and “mourning” here, or even “happy” or “joy” or “loyal”—we can’t fully understand what is going on in another species’s brain—what is indisputable is that pets get left behind by people all the time, and they clearly react to it. In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter if an animal is actually grieving or showing affection or bringing comfort or if they are not—if a human perceives that to be the case, and it feels real to them, then it can have real consequences.
Take Oscar, a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in Rhode Island, who has accurately predicted the deaths of more than a hundred people. Dr. David Dosa, author of Making Rounds with Oscar and a doctor at Steere House, has suggested that Oscar is attracted to dying patients because they release some sort of pheromone. Oscar picks up on this chemical change and shows up at the room of the dying person before the staff at Steere House has any idea that the person is so close to the end. But it doesn’t really matter why Oscar shows up at a dying patient’s room—what matters is that he’s there. “I’d like to think Oscar embodies empathy and companionship,” writes Dosa. “He is a critical cog in a well-oiled and dedicated health care team.” The Steere House staffers do everything they can to make their dying patients as comfortable as possible toward the end, and Oscar’s presence helps the staff do that. When Oscar starts to spend time with a patient, the staff can guess what’s going to happen next. The physicians, nurses, and aides are able to notify the patient’s family that things are looking grim, so they know it’s time to come say goodbye. Oscar also provides comfort for older, sick patients who otherwise may have died alone. Families of patients have expressed to Dosa how comforted they felt knowing Oscar was with their loved ones in their last moments. It’s the same thing as with Clark—it doesn’t really matter if he was consciously choosing to warm Dori’s spot on the bed or not. His actions, whatever the motivation, brought both Dori and Meri comfort in those hard final days.
