Tag pet loss

Walking the talk with my own animals

Nancy Crowe

My partner and I recently made the gut-wrenching decision to let our 11-year-old dog, Molly, be put to sleep. That was preceded by weeks of: How bad is it? How bad might it get? Are her good days/minutes still outnumbering the bad? What else can we try? 

Over and over, I told Molly I loved her and thanked her for the love, care and laughs she’s given us. I talked with her and the cats about what was happening and acknowledged how strange and sad it all was. I assured all of them we would get through it, one day at a time, and that Kathy and I would care for and support them. We shared healing meditations and I prayed for courage.

Every time I started down the path of worry and despair, I reminded myself to return to the present moment, which was where Molly needed me to be. Sometimes I got further down that path than other times. I kept coming back, however imperfectly.

After Molly gently departed on her next adventure, Lucy (the black tortoiseshell cat pictured above) was stoic and attentive. Dusty, her younger calico sister, kind of understood what was going on but still found it confusing. Kathy and I did our best to reassure them and cope with the raw void. 

Less than a week after Molly’s passing, I noticed food-driven Lucy wasn’t finishing her kibble. She ended up having five teeth extracted. Lucy has tooth resorption, which basically means her saliva breaks down her teeth, and had had five extractions less than a year before. Tooth resorption is not uncommon in cats, but science hasn’t figured out why it happens or how to fix it.  

This time her recovery was full of ups and downs — different medications for pain and nausea, trying all manner of soft foods and feeding methods to get her to eat, and trips back to the vet clinic to be checked and rechecked. We were all still slogging through the fog of loss. I shared meditation with Lucy daily but wondered if I was getting it all wrong.

On a Saturday, after another vet visit and another failed attempt to get her to eat more than a couple of small bites, I was at the end of my tether. I wanted Lucy better. Yesterday.

Lucy was getting veterinary care. Now I had to force myself to do what I’d suggest to any client in this situation: Take a breath and focus on the connection rather than “the problem.”

Only then was I able to communicate with my cat without worry butting in.

What Lucy told me was not that she was tired of going to the vet and being cajoled to eat … though who could blame her? What she told me was that her mouth was still adjusting and her body was healing. She could feel the prayers and healing energy working. What she needed was time. And steadiness. She needed me not only to show up but keep coming back. Because we humans do drift.

I began to breathe a little easier. Her appetite remained sketchy for the rest of the weekend. On Monday afternoon she followed me into the furnace room, which is off limits to the cats, and ducked underneath some shelving.

“Lucy! Outta there!”

All I could see was the faint, dark outline of a cat crouched amid the dust bunnies. Never have I been so glad to see a cat behave like a stinker.

I went back upstairs, grabbed a fork and tapped the side of her stainless steel food bowl. Out of the furnace room and up the basement stairs she ran. And ate a bit more food.

The next morning, Lucy ate her breakfast normally. Well, maybe not quite normally, but close enough that we could see she’d turned a corner.

Lucy continues to improve, and we all continue to heal. It is not a linear process, and of course there’s never a good time for an animal to be ill or pass away. We humans have enormous responsibility for our animal companions, and yet there’s so much we cannot control. I’ve discovered that returning to God, to the breath, and to the presence of the animals can only help. Sometimes it’s the only thing that does.

Even if I have to do it several times a day (or hour), I’ll keep coming back.

Ready to adopt again?

Nancy Crowe

dog & person silhouette Image by Barbara Jackson from Pixabay

Image by Barbara Jackson from Pixabay

As an animal communicator, I walk with people and their animal friends through a lot of endings and beginnings.

The pain of loss is real and raw. It deserves respect. At the same time, you are here on earth with much love to give. Plenty of animals need loving homes.

Only you know whether and when to welcome another animal into your home, but here is my perspective along with a couple of things to consider.

Eight years ago this month, I lost my much-loved Idgie, the sweet diva of a tiger cat who inspired my first forays into animal communication and Reiki. Idgie had been sick, and she and I had been saying our see-you-laters for months. Deep down, I knew other feline friends would succeed her. At some point.

Idgie in cat bed 2007 crop

Idgie, 1996-2012

When I came home from the vet clinic and faced an Idgie-less, cat-less house, the pain hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. It was all I could do to survive in the moment, much less think about the future.

Not long afterward, I read about a horrific animal cruelty case in which fireworks were tied to a kitten’s tail. Something opened up within me, and I realized how much I wanted to give another kitty a home. And Idgie had trained me so well.

One afternoon, I sat on my back porch and took a few deep breaths. My partner and I planned to visit the city shelter the next day. It was only six weeks after Idgie’s passing — was it too soon?

I connected with Idgie in spirit and asked her to guide us to our next feline companion, whenever and wherever it would best happen. What I received was her classic ears-back expression and: “Right. Like I wouldn’t be involved in that decision.”

At the shelter, Kathy and I met several kittens, but none seemed especially interested in us. Then the volunteer brought out one who was about to go to a satellite adoption center. The four-month-old black tortie prowled around the adoption counselor’s office, trying to figure out where she was and why. Then she came and sniffed both of us, accepting the gentle pets we offered.

2012 Lucy on my desk chair crop

This is Lucy not long after we adopted her.

When I sensed the kitten was open to it, I gingerly picked her up. I commented on her distinctive coloring, notably the gold streak between her eyes that seemed to stop and resume on top of her head.

“Doesn’t it look like God came along with a paintbrush?” the volunteer said.

I held the kitten so that we were eye to eye. She reached out with one tiny black paw and patted my face.

We’d been chosen.

Did the joy of welcoming Lucy erase the hurt of losing Idgie? No. I still felt like crying every time I saw a tiger cat or a picture of one that reminded me of her. Lucy succeeded Idgie, but did not replace her. One being cannot truly replace another, and there’s no sidestepping grief if we are to love fully. While I continued to grieve for Idgie, my heart filled with gratitude for the love she had given me. That love enabled me to recognize the connection with Lucy, who needed a home as Idgie had.

The only thing I can imagine that’s worse than losing a pet is never having had that animal in my life. 

If you are struggling, or just wondering, here’s what I suggest:

  • Pay attention to your intuition. It’s hard to do this when you are in pain. But if you can, get quiet and ask yourself if it’s time to visit the animal shelter — or contact a rescue if you’re interested in a particular breed or type of animal. If you feel a lightness or sense of excitement and joy, that indicates a yes! If there’s a heavy, sad sensation, you might want to wait.
  • Adopt from a place of abundance, not lack. Another animal cannot truly replace the one you lost, or take away your pain. The last thing you want is to impose expectations on a new pet that are not about him or her at all. Stay with your grief long enough — however long that is — for your heart to open to a new and totally unique animal companion.
  • Remember the animal chooses, too. (Some animals would say they do all the choosing, but you get the idea.) My experience is that each dog, cat, bird, horse, human, or whoever comes into our lives for a reason. The animals probably have a better grasp of it than we do. When you meet a prospective new companion, pay attention to the way they respond and how you feel.

Whenever you and your next animal companion find each other, you are both signing on for a beautiful, painful, and totally worthwhile adventure. You both deserve no less.

 

 

Animal Wise: ‘Guides’ sheds light on difficult subjects

Nancy Crowe
Photo by MabelAmber:Pixabay(Photo by MabelAmber/Pixabay)

As much as Susan Chernak McElroy gets it right with Animals as Teachers and Healers (Ballantine Books, 1997), she gets right to the heart with Animals as Guides for the Soul (Ballantine Books, 1998).

This follow-up is not only a worthy exploration of the relationship between humans and animals, but also a potentially transforming walk through some of the thorniest aspects of these relationships.

8482McElroy, who has worked as a technical writer and editor as well as in several animal-related occupations, writes largely from her experience on a small Wyoming farm. Insights from people who wrote to her after reading her previous book are included.

I appreciate so much in Guides for the Soul, but here are three primary take-aways.

The first is that the healing benefits of our relationships with animals are often subtle, but no less powerful. It isn’t always the spectacular, tossing-away-the-cane miracle with the therapy dog. More often, it’s the steady warmth of the cat curled up on the patient’s lap or the jingling of tags along a quiet country road day after day. Sometimes the miracle is only seen in hindsight.

“We are so conditioned to expect drama and heroics in healing that we forget the staggering importance of all the healing that goes unseen,” says McElroy, a cancer survivor. (Check out this wonderful six-minute video about two guys — one a morbidly overweight human, the other a middle-aged rescue dog — who healed each other.)

What if, she asks, we were to believe that the being at the end of the leash, in the cat carrier, or on a perch could heal by his or her very presence, offering exactly what is needed in every moment? That the dog nuzzling a crying adult was administering critical emotional first aid, or the horse heard the bullied teen as no one else could? Is that so far off the mark?

Second, McElroy delves into the rocky territory of death in a way that can benefit anyone who has lost a much-loved animal, particularly when the loss is accompanied by shame and guilt. These experiences and memories, however long ago, stick to us until we acknowledge their multilayered impact, she says.

Quoting respected authors on pet loss as well as people confronting long-buried grief and remorse, she offers perspective and tools for healing. However, she is respectful enough not to put forth easy answers. The stories of McElroy’s precious llama, Phaedra; and Jody Seay’s elderly black Lab friend McKenzie, are likely to bring both a tear and a spark of hope.

Finally, even when the animals involved are not our own, what can we do when we witness the inexplicable and cruel? When McElroy was about 11, a young coyote with his mangled leg still dangling in a steel-jaw trap was part of a wildlife exhibit at a nearby park. Day after day, he lay in a rusting wire cage with no food or water. She pleaded with the park rangers to care for the coyote. They ignored her. She begged her parents to do something, wrote to the local paper, and contacted the town mayor and her family’s veterinarian.

No adult would intervene until she called Mrs. Roberts, the mother of a friend, who picketed the park. The exhibit shut down within a week. The coyote made the front page of the local paper and was released to Mrs. Roberts, whose veterinarian husband helped care for the coyote in a backyard pen. Months later, Mrs. Roberts drove the coyote to the desert and released him back into the wild.

“She reminded me that although it was she who freed the coyote, it was I who had brought the coyote to her attention. At the age of eleven, I learned that one person can stand up against suffering and make a difference,” McElroy recalls.

We should all have, or be, a Mrs. Roberts.