How Animals Grieve Read Online Free Page A

person they loved. This went on for about six months. Then, one fall day, Karen fell asleep on the couch with Willa snuggled close. After perhaps an hour’s nap, Karen awoke to find Willa still in place near her hip, and Amy up at her shoulder. The two cats were in fur-to-fur contact. “And,” as Karen puts it, “there were no ugly noises!”
    Willa and Amy’s relationship entered a fresh phase. Once, Amy licked Willa from head to toe; Willa expressed no blissful purr, but she did allow the intimacy. And then the two cats began eating side by side, from the same bowl. The relationship that Willa and Amy have developed is far less intimate than what Willa shared with her sister for all those years. Willa and Amy never knot themselves into a tight circle or press close in the siblings’ butterfly formation. Willa has selected a new favorite sleeping place, one she never frequented when Carson was alive. She burrows into the space between Karen’s pillow and Ron’s, and faces the wood of the headboard. Once, Karen caught Amy investigating this spot, as if to see what the attraction was for Willa, but Amy never tries to sleep there.
    A remnant of that tight two-sister circle remains. Willa, when napping on the bed or on the ottoman (a spot she shared with her sister), still makes her half-moon. To Karen, this is an evocative image because it’s so incomplete: the empty space speaks to her of Carson. “There’s an emptiness in Willa’s posture now,” Karen says.
    Karen knows that Willa’s physical and emotional well-being have improved since Amy’s arrival. Willa has put on weight, grooms herself more fastidiously, and is more vigorous in her overall approach to life. Are memories of Carson still rooted in Willa’s mind? Do images of sharing the fire-warmed ottoman with her sister flicker through her dreams? This realm of the cat-mind goes beyond science.
    In 2011 I began writing a weekly post on anthropology and animal behavior at National Public Radio’s
13.7
blog, which is devoted to science and culture. In a piece about animal grief, I offered a short version of Willa’s and Carson’s story. Back came responses about readers’ own experience with animals who mourn.
    Kate B.’s story has powerful parallels to Willa and Carson’s. For fifteen years, two Siamese cats, brothers named Niles and Maxwell, lived with Kate’s parents. Niles became ill from pancreatic cancer, and when it came time to put him down, Maxwell accompanied his brother to the vet. Soon, Maxwell found himself back home, surrounded by familiar places and favorite things, but without his sibling.
    “Maxwell spent the next several months,” Kate remembers, “constantly wandering the house and crying the most agonizing cries, looking for his brother.” As it turned out, Maxwell lived just several more months. During this time, he derived the most comfort from the visits of Kate’s three young cats, who were brought to see him and who bonded with him. Now, when Kate brings the trio to her parent’s house, they search for Maxwell, and one of them often sleeps exactly where Maxwell slept.
    Sibling ties, like those between sisters Willa and Carson and brothers Niles and Maxwell, are powerful connections that, when broken, may give way to mourning. Cats may mourn a lost companion, though, even when no blood tie exists. Channah Pastorius described the friendship between Boris, a brown tabby she adopted from a shelter, and Fritz, a kitten her son brought home. The two felines play-wrestled and slept with their front legs entwined. At age eight, Boris developed kidney failure, but with good veterinary care and lots of TLC, he managed to live two and a half more years.
    Finally the inevitable came to pass, and Boris was put down. What happened next has a familiar ring. “Fritz mourned the loss of Boris with sad yowls and depression,” Channah wrote. Fritz was lethargic, uninterested in his favorite toys or much of anything else.
    But a second