In memory of Sapphire, a wonderful companion cat

My cat, Sapphire, named for his beautiful blue eyes, passed away peacefully in my arms early Saturday morning.  He was, we estimate, about 16 years old.   We don't know exactly, because he was a stray who showed up in our yard in January 2000.  He was an adult and not kittenish when we found him, so we assumed  he was about 2 years old then.

It was actually my sheepdog, Grett (now deceased) who found him.  When I went out to do chores one morning, Grett kept trying to lead me to the old garage we use as a shed.  He would look back at me, take a few steps, then look back again.  I followed the dog and there was Sapphire, sitting up on a shelf.  He was lost and afraid, also cold, hungry, and thirsty.  I began putting food and water out for him, and soon he came down to greet me each day.  He began letting me pet him, but it was a long time before  I could hold him.

"Brotherly Love Cats"
A favorite photo I took of Sapphire (left)
and his friend Patches (right)

Eventually he did get to where he would come up to the house, then later inside.  From then on, he was a loving cuddle kitty who liked to sleep on the bed.  He was also a "nurse cat" in that he sensed when another cat or a human was sick.  He especially liked to lick and groom the other cats, and was often the first to welcome new cats when the arrived on our little hobby farm.  (We have taken in a lot of strays over the years.).

You may have heard of dogs that can smell tumors and such?  Well, Sapphire kept insisting on putting his head on my wife Caryl's abdomen where she has a hernia.  After surgery to correct this, Sapphire did not do that anymore.  We believe he knew something was wrong.

About two years ago he had what we think was a stroke.  We though we were going to lose him then, but he rallied and recovered.  From then on he was a bit uncoordinated and sometimes confused, so we kept him inside the house unless one of us was outside to watch him.

About a month ago he began to slowly go downhill, eating less, sleeping more, and I knew the end was near.  He slipped n and out of a coma until finally, around 3am on the Sabbath (Saturday), he crossed over.  (It is strange how many of my pets have died on the Sabbath.  Far more than would be mere coincidence.  Perhaps it is because the sabbath is a taste of Eden?)


On Sunday morning, as is our custom, we buried him on our land, marking the grave with stones.  Frost had already killed most of the flowers in the yard, but I found enough to decorate the grave.  He will be sorely missed, and remembered as a wonderful friend.

You can make a donation to the ASPCA in Sapphire's memory at:

https://www.aspca.org/team/Sapphire-memorial-campaign

Sapphire's grave, November 1, 2015

A sad farewell to MamaHen

I am sad to report that MamaHen, the mother chicken who appeared in several videos and protest posters, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge to the next world.  She was 11 years old, which is very old for a chicken, and she lived a full life.  She will be deeply missed.

MamaHen got her name because she was always sneaking off to make secret nests and hatch chicks.  She was a mixed-breed bird, with ancestry closer to the old-fashioned breeds, and the urge to go broody was very strong in her.  She was also an excellent mother, guiding her babies and teaching them how to be happy, healthy chickens.  I did not encourage her to breed, but when you let chickens run free and you have roosters, life happens.  So, when she did manage to hide out for 21 days, I welcomed her newly-hatched family into my flock.

MamaHen and her babies were often ambassadors for their species through photos and video footage, as well as animal rights protest posters.  Her first "media appearance" was a brief shot in the documentary film, A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal our Imperiled Planet, produced by Jewish Vegetarians of North America in 2007.   (Article continues below the photo.)



MamaHen and family featured on a protest poster by
The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos in 2013.

A lot more footage of her and her brood of chicks was shot on my farm than was used in the documentary.  So, when the Shamayim v'Aretz (Heaven and Earth) Institute, a kosher vegan org based in California, asked me for a short video to link to their site, I incorporated some of the unused footage of MamaHen from 2007.   The result was The Soul of Every Living Thing, a five-minute video about Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's teaching that everything in nature is praising God, and a plea for vegetarianism.  MamaHen and her brood play a prominent role in the story.

I have also used this close-up of one of her chicks in some of the articles on this blog, including my 2013 essay, Baby Chicks are NOT Easter Toys! (Or Passover toys, for that matter.)  MamaHen is the "hen on a nest" shown on the same page.

In 2013 I was asked by the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos to narrate a one-minute video called Kaporos: A Heartfelt Plea for Mercy.  The soundtrack of this short film was also used on a sound truck at protests in New York that same year.  In the process of choosing the stills to be included, I sent some photos of myself and also my chickens, including  the one of MamaHen and family on this page, which was featured both on the truck and the poster shown above.

MamaHen is gone, but her son, the yellow chick on the poster, grew up to be a rooster named Big Bird.  He is also the chick in the close-up.  And he carries on the family tradition as a chicken ambassador.  Big Bird was featured on a poster with me in 2013, as part of the same campaign as the poster of  MamaHen.   And so, his mother's legacy lives on. 

Big Bird and Rabbi Gershom urging
Jews to use money, not chickens, for
Kapporos ceremonies.

The Importance of Pet Funerals for Children

When I was about 11 years old, my neighbor's dog had puppies.  Their four-year-old son accidentally dropped one on its head, and the puppy died.  The boy was not very upset about this.  He told his mother, "Just throw some water on it."  He had seen this in cartoons, where characters got blown up or crushed by a falling safe or whatever and then revived -- so why not in real life?

It was then that his mom realized her son did not understand the finality of death.  He really did think that a bucket of water would bring the puppy back to life.  So she decided to have a funeral for the little dog, inviting us neighbor kids to participate.

The puppy was wrapped in a soft blanket and placed in a shoe box for a coffin.  We all reverently watched as the box was put into a hole in their backyard.  Each of us then put in a handful of dirt.  When the hole was filled in, we marked the grave with rocks and added some flowers from the garden.  It was a beautiful funeral, and a lesson I never forgot.  I was old enough, of course, to understand about death.  It was the beauty of the simple ceremony that stuck with me forever.

Grave of the Two Kittens
July 1, 2013

This week, I passed the tradition along to my four-year-old grandson, Nick.  His brother's cat had 5 kittens on Friday, and Nick  got to see one of them born.  Unfortunately, two of them did not survive.  On Monday, he and his father brought the dead kittens to our place to be buried.  Usually I do this back in the field behind the woods, but because that is a long walk for both my grandson and my arthritic wife, we decided to bury them in a flower garden in the front yard.

The last time we had buried a pet, Nick was still too young to really understand what we were doing, but now he was older and very much wanting to participate.

Our memorial pretty much followed the format of that puppy funeral so many years ago, with the addition of putting tobacco into the grave.  This is a Native American tradition and, since Nick is part Indian, we wanted to honor that heritage as well.  Nick helped fill the grave, then helped me find and place the stones.  We all picked wildflowers to put on the grave, and my wife told the story of the Rainbow Bridge.  After saying our goodbyes, we all went inside to eat.  Later in the afternoon, when we were back outside, Nick decided on his own to walk over to the garden to visit the grave.

I believe these kinds of rituals are very important for children.  All too often, we assume that kids should be shielded from death, that it will be too traumatic for them.  I disagree.  Death is part of life, and it is much better for children to understand that, rather than just say their pet "went away"  and leave them wondering when kitty will come back.  Very often, the death of a pet is their first encounter with death, and a good time to teach about funeral customs.  Children need to grieve just as much as we adults do,  even if the deceased is just a turtle or goldfish.  Funerals, after all, are more for the living than the dead.  I never forgot the puppy funeral, and I hope my grandson will one day carry on that tradition with his own children.

Coolio Cat and Nightshade: Did their love transcend death?

Do bonds of friendship between animals survive death?  This is an interesting question that may not be provable with hard evidence, but I believe that, in some cases at least, they do.


Coolio Cat

Consider the story of Coolio Cat and Nightshade, two of my cats who shared a lifetime together.  Three weeks ago, Coolio passed away peacefully at the age of 15 (Read his memorial story).  This past Friday, his lifelong friend, Nightshade, followed him into the light.  Now granted, Nightshade was 14 years old, and her health was not very good lately.  But what interests me is how quickly she went downhill after Coolio's death, and how her behavior changed.  I also had a sense that Coolio's spirit was still with us, and that he was hanging around with Nightshade, watching over her.

Nightshade in her Halloween cat stance

Nightshade was always an emotionally needy cat. She was a rescue who had a terrible, abusive kittenhood.  Once we had adopted her, she quickly bonded with us and with Coolio, a young stray cat we took in when we moved here.  Although Coolio was a year older than she was, he was still young enough to romp and play and teach her how to be a happy cat.  On the other hand, she didn't trust our dogs, and would puff up and hiss if they got too close. It was this habit of rearing up like a Halloween cat, along with her somewhat grumpy facial expression, that earned her the name Nightshade.

In terms of black cat superstitions, I used to joke that although a black cat crossed my path every day, I also had a lucky white cat that canceled the bad luck out. Sort of yin and yang. Of course, I don't really believe in any of this, it was just family fun. As Groucho Marx once said, "If a black cat crosses your path, it means the animal is going somewhere." (Oddly enough, Nightshade started turning white in her old age. When we adopted her, she was pure black, but in later years she had developed several white spots on her fur.)

Nightshade also loved to ride around on my shoulder -- so much so, that I used to joke she was a reincarnation of a parrot. This was cute, but also sometimes rather painful, because, as she got older, she would dig her claws in. Even as a kitten she was always afraid of falling, which led me to believe she must have been dropped, or even thrown, at some time before we got her, especially since she was distrustful of children. (Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of her doing the parrot act, to my deep regret.)

After Coolio died, Nightshade became even more clingy.  She wanted to be held constantly, and spent a lot more time riding around on my shoulder.  Meanwhile, her health took a sudden turn for the worse.  She developed breathing problems, ate less, and seemed to have trouble keeping warm.  I would often find her sitting on top of the fridge, or next to the crock pot when it was on.  She also sat on top of the stove when we were using the oven, and would snuggle against the other cats on the couch.  And she spent more time sitting in the sun, where, presumably, her black fur absorbed the warmth like a feline solar heater.

Nightshade in her younger days,
when she was pure black

On the day she died, I had let her outside with the other cats, where she liked to sit on the front porch.  An hour or so later, I found her dead on the grass in the front yard.  My first thought was one of guilt:  If only I had kept her inside, she would still be alive.  Which wasn't really true.  There were no signs of trauma on her body, no indication that she had been hit by a car or attacked by an animal.  She had simply passed away.  Had I kept her inside, she would have died inside.  As it was, she crossed over while doing something she really loved:  sunning herself in the grass on a warm autumn day.  (I am reminded of my brother-in-law Enzo, a licensed falconer, who died of a heart attack while releasing his hawk at a bird demonstration.   He, too, went while doing what he loved.)

Because it was the afternoon before the Sabbath, I was unable to bury her right away.  (She is the third cat I've had die just before the Sabbath, and Coolio died on the Sabbath itself.  Is this coincidence, or do they prefer to go then because it is more spiritual?  The Sabbath is sometimes called "a taste of Eden," and Eden is, after all, the Jewish metaphor for Heaven.  Plus, Eden has animals in it.)

On Sunday I buried her next to Coolio -- and here is where things got strange.  I dug the hole as usual, lined it with dry grass, and laid her in it, wrapped in a soft blanket.  After saying my final goodbyes, I filled in the hole and marked it with rocks.  Then suddenly the wind came up, and there was a feeling of light and happiness.  For a fleeting moment I had a mental image of Coolio and Nightshade walking together, healthy and happy again.  Then it was over.  Some might say it was just my imagination, but I am convinced that Coolio's spirit was waiting for her, and that they went together to the spiritual Garden of Eden.

http://gofundme.com/rooster613-cats

The graphic I used for years on eBay.  These kittens are,
of course, long ago adopted out to forever homes,
after which their mother, Chayah Cat, was spayed. 

In Loving Memory of My Sweet Coolio Cat

Coolio, my old white cat, passed away around one o'clock in the morning on September 22, 2012, which was both the fall equinox and Shabbat Tshuvah, the Sabbath that comes between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  It was a very auspicious time for my 15-year-old feline friend to make his transition into the next world.

We found Coolio as a half-grown,very hungry white kitten who was hanging around our hobby farm when we moved there in the spring of 1997.  Half his tail was missing, and what was left was all broken up and bent. ( I always wondered if he had gotten caught in a trap.)  He had been stealing dog food from my neighbor's yard, but they didn't really want him.  All it took was one bowl of cat food for him to decide he was going to be ours for life.

They say that white cats don't catch as much as tabbies, because they are more visible to the mice.  Coolio must have known this, because he used to roll in the dust on our dirt road, to camouflage himself before he went hunting.  He also learned to sit on top of rocks, logs, and other perches, then patiently look down into the tall grass.  When a mouse or other prey came by, he pounced off his perch like a mountain lion and, more often than not, succeeded.  He certainly did his share of rodent control around here!

When he wasn't outside hunting, he loved to cuddle.  I used to call him "The Undercover Cat," because on chilly nights he would crawl under the covers with me, with just his head poking out against my cheek, purring softly.  In his prime he was a rather fat cat (having known hunger, he tended to overeat on whatever food was around).  Once, when he was curled up in the front room with his head tucked under his body, my grandson asked, "What is that?"  I replied, rather sarcastically, "That is a cat."   He laughed and said, "Oh, I thought it was a fur pillow!"  (Which would be a real shock in our vegetarian home.)

Coolio was indeed soft as a cuddly pillow -- so much so, that I used to sing him a silly song to the tune of "Calendar Girl," about how "I love, I love, I love, I love my Coolio Cat, Oh my sweet soft Coolio Cat..."  (What can I say?  I'm autistic, and I have this weird thing with tunes going through my head, often with new words coming out of my own brain.  Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a Broadway musical.  On the other hand, my autism has brought me much closer to my animals.)

Coolio also loved to sit in the sink.  So does his black female friend, Nightshade.  I don't know what it is about the sink that cats love so much.  I theorize that the porcelain must be cooler in the summer, and in winter it's often warm from the water that went down the drain after washing.  Nightshade is like a little heat-seeking missile who can always locate the warmest spot to curl up.  On Shabbat you can find her sitting next to the warm crock pot that holds our vegetarian Sabbath soup.

Earlier this summer I noticed that Coolio was slowing down, spending most of his time closer to home, and not eating as much.  There wasn't anything really wrong with him except old age.  I got him a bigger variety of wet foods, and learned that he preferred the kinds with fish, probably because they smell stronger.  Older cats, I read somewhere, tend to lose some of their sense of smell.  This seemed to be true with Coolio.

As he got closer to death, he slept most of the time, often on the bathroom windowsill, where the sun warmed him in the morning and he could look outside and smell the flowers and trees.  On nice days I would take him outside.  He was getting too slow and vulnerable to be out there alone, so I would sit on the porch and watch him take short walks and lie basking in the sun.  At night I would carry him upstairs with me, because he was too weak to climb the stairs by himself.  Toward the end he was pretty thin and bony, so he preferred to sleep on my bed, curled up on one of his fuzzy cat blankets.  (I did worry about incontinence, but decided it would be no worse than cleaning up after a messy human baby.  As it was, he was able to get to the upstairs catbox and never did leak.)

Some people reading this may wonder why I didn't just have him euthanized when it became  obvious he was dying.  I'm not 100% against euthanasia if an animal is severely injured or in serious pain.  But I do believe that animals have souls -- maybe not exactly like human souls, but there is a consciousness there -- and that it is best for them to die naturally whenever possible.  Coolio wasn't really suffering, he was just very old.  And he seemed to know the end was coming, as animals often do.  Had he been a wild animal, he would have crawled off in the bushes somewhere to die alone.  Because he was bonded with me, he chose to be in my room, away from the hubbub of the household but still in familiar surroundings.

On the night he died, he was lying beside me on my bed.  I don't know if he had made a noise or just moved, but I woke up and saw that the end was at hand.  As I stroked him, he purred very softly, his breathing became shallower, his heartbeat slowed.  Then he took the last breath.  I felt a few more heartbeats, and he was gone.  It was a sad moment, but also very spiritual.  I have been at the deathbed of many animals over the years (as well as a few humans), and it never seems to amaze me, this mystical thing called death.  One moment they are alive in this world, and the next moment, they are gone.  There was no Grim Reaper come for Coolio, just the soft, quiet whisper of angel wings.  I only hope that when my time comes, my death will be as gentle and easy as Coolio's was.  I miss him very much, but I also believe he is waiting for me at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge, and that one day we will go together to the spiritual Garden of Eden. 

The story of the Rainbow Bridge
(click the pic to enlarge and read it)

On children, dying pets, and the Circle of Life

On Friday morning, it was very clear that one of our cats, Tigger, was dying.  It was expected.  He was old and his health had not been good lately, but it was still sad.  As it turned out, we were babysitting two grandchildren, Chris (age 8) and Nick (almost 3), that same day.  So my wife and I debated:  Should we show them the dying cat or not?  Would it be a trauma, or a lesson in compassion?  We decided it would be best to tell them and let them say goodbye to their friend.


Tigger in 2007

He was barely alive when the kids arrived, but still aware enough to respond to petting.  I explained that he would probably slip into a coma soon and die in his sleep before the day was over.  And that's what happened.   Cats often go off and hide when they die, and I did not want that happening where I could not find him.  So we put him in the cat carrier when I was not holding him.  He willingly went in there, instinctively wanting some privacy.   By mid-afternoon, he was gone. 

We couldn't bury him right away because the Sabbath was coming, but it was cold enough outside that we could store his body in the shed until Sunday morning.  I wrapped him in a small blanket with his head sticking out, and 3-year-old Nick said, "Bye, meow," which is his word for cat.   8-year-old Chris understood death better, and could see that the spirit was gone from Tigger's eyes.  It was a very sad time, but also an opportunity to talk about death.  Chris asked if he could help me bury Tigger on Sunday, and I said he could.

So this morning we did just that.  It had been raining but God gave us a window of opportunity when the rain stopped and we could go into the back field where we have our pet cemetery.   Chris and I went together, leaving my wife with the toddler, since she has trouble walking on rough terrain and we weren't sure when the rain would start again.

Chris and I dug the hole together, then lined the bottom with dried goldenrod flowers.  We laid Tigger in the grave, wrapped in one of his favorite cat blankets.   Chris is part Cree Indian on his mother's side, and he wanted to follow the Native custom of putting tobacco in the grave, so he did.  This is not my custom, and frankly it's a bit pagan from the Jewish point of view, but when it comes to funerals, I think it's important for the mourners to be able to express grief in ways meaningful to them.  Tigger was as much his cat as mine, maybe more so, since it was Chris' mother who had found him abandoned as a kitten in a gas station parking lot.  They couldn't keep him at the time, so the cat came to live with us, but Chris always looked for him when  he came to visit.

As we filled in the grave, we talked about the Circle of Life, and how everyone eventually dies, to make room for new animals and people.  I told him the story of the Rainbow Bridge, which, although it is a piece of modern poetry and not Scripture per se,  is as good a metaphor as any for animals going to heaven.   Personally, I do believe the souls of our animals will join us in the Next World.  After all, the Jewish metaphor for heaven is the Garden of Eden, and it had animals in it, right?  Perhaps that is where the lion really can lie down with the lamb.

We marked the grave with rocks and I told Chris how, when Jews visit a grave, we leave a small stone in remembrance -- a custom dating all the way back to biblical times.   So the funeral had both Native and Jewish elements, expressing each of our beliefs.  Then the rain started again.  We headed back to feed the chickens, then returned to the house.  We didn't talk much on the way back, but there was a sense of closure and we felt Tigger's soul was at peace. 

Some people may wonder why I didn't have the cat euthanized when it was obvious that he was going downhill.  The answer is the same that I would give for a dying human:  I believe it is better for the soul to transition naturally into the Next World whenever possible.  And yes, I do believe animals have souls, as I have written before on this blog.  Although Tigger had health problems, he was not in serious pain as far as I could tell.  Up until the last day, he responded to being held, purred in happiness when petted, and slept next to me on the couch.  So I felt it better to accept that he was dying, and give him the hospice care he needed for comfort.  It was a good decision -- for all of us.



Tigger (right) and Bugsy, a feline friend
who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2009.

Thoughts on death while burying a pet chicken

One of my old hens died last night.  She apparently went peacefully in her sleep, because I found her under the roost where she usually sat.  As I was burying her out in the woods, I found myself thinking back to when I was a child, and how my mother told me it was useless to have pets, because, she said,  "They only die anyway."  I don't know where she got this attitude.  Did she have a beloved cat or dog that died in her own childhood?  Or was she simply repeating something that she herself had heard as a child?  She never told me.  All I know is that although she eventually relented and let us have a dog, she never really bonded with him. 

The Talmud tells us that Adam and Eve felt much the same way after Cain killed Abel.  Adam was so heartbroken over this, that he didn't have intercourse with Eve for 130 years.  (see Talmud, Eruvin 18).   Why bring more children into the world if they are just going to die anyway?  But God wanted Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply," so eventually they slept together again.   And so it continues to this day.  

Unlike my mother, I have had many, many companion animals over the years.   And I have outlived all but the ones that are still with me.  The fact of the matter is, the human lifespan is much longer than that of most animals.  Which means that the individual animals who were alive when I was born 63 years ago are already dead, with perhaps the exception of a few long-lived species like parrots and Galapogos tortoises.  Why should this be?  Perhaps it is God's way of helping us deal with the impermanence of life on earth.  I have grieved at the death of each of my animals, but I have also learned, over the years, that death is not something to be feared.  It's a natural part of the cycle of life. 

Animals seem to know when death is coming.  I once had a dog named Shunka (which is Lakota for "dog") who would walk with me in the woods.   As he got older he went deaf and was somewhat confused, perhaps from a minor stroke, but he knew the trail well.  Every morning we would walk the same route, past the chicken coop, into the woods to the big oak tree, then back around to the house.  One morning, we got as far as the coop when Shunka lay down and looked at me with his big brown eyes, as if to say, "I can't do this anymore."  He then walked back to the house, and by morning he was dead.   He had lived a good long life -- 18 years -- and was ready to go.  I cried when I found his body, but I also knew that he was old and tired, and that nothing lives forever.  We had those years of happiness together, and I still cherish those memories.  Sometimes, when I walk in those same woods, I feel as if Shunka's spirit is walking with me.  Maybe he is.

So my mother was wrong.  While it is true that pets eventually die, it is not useless to have them.  While they are with us, they give us much love and joy.  And when they go, they help us accept the day when we, too, will cross that rainbow bridge and join the circle of life. 



Dawn in Pine County, MN