How Animals Grieve Read Online Free Page B

common thread links Fritz’s story with those of Willa and Maxwell: when a tiny black kitten showed up on the family’s patio and ran indoors, Fritz perked up. He began right away to play with the kitten, named Scooter by the family. Once again, a new and younger partner abated at least some of the grief.
    Mourning may cross even species lines, as we will see again in later chapters. Kathleen Kenna’s fifteen-year-old cat Wompa reacted strongly when the family dog, eight-year-old Kuma, died after a long illness. Wompa had regularly allowed the dog to groom her, and the two acted like best buddies. (Meanwhile, the other cat in the house had nothing to do with the dog.) A few days after Kuma succumbed to cancer, Wompa began to moan loudly. The strange, intermittent crying, which sounded “like a banshee” to Kathleen, lasted for several days. The cat also shifted her nighttime sleeping place to the spot at the end of the bed where Kuma had slept.
    After I discussed animals’ responses to death on a radio program, listener Laura Nix e-mailed me about two cats called Dusty and Rusty, who had lived with her friends for many years. They were sisters, but they were no Willa and Carson! Their relationship was downright antagonistic, to the degree that they carved up the house into two territories: Dusty lived upstairs, and Rusty lived downstairs. When Dusty began to fail, in her old age, she was cared for lovingly by Laura’s friend. On the night that she died, indeed, at the moment she died, Rusty—who was, as always, downstairs and apart from her sister—let out a single howl. Laura notes, “It was the only time I ever heard her make such a sound. I can’t tell you how she apparently knew.”
    Although I live surrounded by cats and am attuned to the possibility of animal grief, I have never witnessed cat mourning. We have lost cats to illness and old age, but the only emotional disruption in the household came from our own grief. Perhaps part of the explanation is that the cats we lost were primarily attached to us rather than to the other cats. Our cats are rescues, and we have a lot of them. Six live indoors with us, and twice that number reside in a spacious pen in our yard. Nestled under trees, sturdily built, with a two-story cat hotel and other hidden grottoes for warmth and shelter, the pen offers sanctuary to these cats, most of whom had lived as part of a feral colony at a public boat landing on the York River, not far from our house. At one point, a few people, annoyed by the colony’s presence, threatened to harm the cats. Building the pen was my husband’s answer to that threat. As hard as we work to reduce the feral-cat population to zero through spay-neuter programs, we want to help the cats who need us right now.
    We enjoy the company of these small creatures, no longer have to fend for themselves against hunger, dogs, coyotes, and uncaring humans. When I walk outside and enter the pen, I enjoy watching shy Big Orange sleep soundly under a bush, one-eyed Scout jump at a bug, and friends Dexter and Daniel relax together near the picnic table. Haley and Kaley, nicknamed “the white sisters,” have never been feral; when a friend called urgently seeking someone who would adopt the two together, before they were euthanized as unwanted, we took them in. These siblings are the most closely bonded of any cats in our care. Kaley is a bit heavier than her sister, with one eye blue, the other green. Haley has a darker smudge atop her head and “talks” more to us humans. The sisters seem hyperaware of each other’s location in the pen and most often choose to eat, rest, or bask in proximity to each other. We don’t know their precise ages, but they’ve been together since birth, at least three or four years. Haley and Kaley are far closer to each other than any other pair of cats we have had. What will happen when one of the white sisters dies? I hope we won’t find out for many years.
    Clearly, I’m