Another Death in the Family

When I started living in my mother’s home, it came with her two cats, Benny and Faith. Now it’s just Faith. Benny, the old black (neutered) tom, went to the vet in June and never came home. The vet diagnosed him with terminal cancer and recommended euthanasia. 

I knew my senior cat was developing multiple major physical problems, as seniors do, but both his body and mind still seemed strong and sharp, and I was stunned to discover he had a tumor that affected half his face and could only have been causing him great discomfort. I could have maybe cared for him at home a little longer, but that would have only been delaying the inevitable. 

I asked about hospice care for cats, although I expected and got a “no.” I asked about grief counseling for pet owners and the response was “no” again. Later some friends helpfully shared some grief counseling sources.

I decided to have the vet handle Ben’s cremation and return the ashes to me. When I went to pick up the remains, they came in an attractive wooden box — such a little box for such a big kitty — with a card and tag reading “Benny Jensen” and all placed inside a soft filmy bag tied with ribbon and gold cord.  

Benny joins the ashes of two of my mother’s other cats, which are kept in her old bedroom, on her headboard designed like a bookcase. Killian, who she mothered when he was an abandoned kitten, is in a large gray ceramic canister. She had the ashes of Tony Tomcat, who stayed when his owner left, sewn into a memory pillow. It’s in a basket next to the wooden box and metal canister that housed him before the memory pillow did.

About a dozen more family cats are buried in the yard. I know the locations of several graves but not all. When I had an estate sale, some genius ripped several decorative paving stones out of the ground (I think some of those stones marked cat graves) and I’ve never been able to get the stones set back just the way they were. In one corner of the yard, I tried to cover over some exposed cat bones, only to later find my gardener, whose genius rivals the stone-ripper’s, left a cat skull sitting on top of the garbage. When I checked the corner I suspected the skull came from, I no longer found bones, so I suspect the bones went in the garbage, too.

I’ve tried to find someone — a veterinarian or a scientist, maybe — who might be willing to exhume the cat graves in a professional manner and arrange for a more dignified resting place, but so far the search has been fruitless. I’ll either have to find new resting places or someone else is going to be digging up my cats’ bones someday.