Pets, Grief, and the Secrets of the Seven Thunders

Is there another nation of people more fond of animals than those of us in the USA? Anything about animals elicits a collective "Awwwww." It's front-page stuff: a full media event.

I'm one of the many afflicted with this peculiar trait. Mine is a special love for cats. They have been my loving companions as far as far back as I can remember. My novels Gray Rainbow Journey (Winner of a National Best Books Award for Multicultural Fiction) and Journey by the Sackcloth Moon are love stories with elements of mystery/suspense that focus on Native Americans at spiritual crossroads, but they also feature Eddie Was, feline sidekick to central character Dina Youngblood. That's how consuming this affliction is with me!

My first kitty, a stray, "adopted" my family when I was three or so. She was an outdoor cat with indoor visiting privileges. We named her Tipi. When we moved from Mississippi to Florida, Tipi stayed behind in the care of an elderly neighbor. I never saw her again.

When I was around the age of six, an orange tabby who didn't hit it off with her "owner"-a Mrs. Wood who lived down the road a way-also condescended to "adopt" us. My big sister, DiDi, and I named it Yellow Kid. What long hours of fun we had with that cat! Actually, we never knew whether it was male or female.

But, like Tipi, Yellow Kid was an outdoor kitty. In my then-world, there were no house cats. It was simply the way things were in that dusty little hamlet where, in the summer, pear trees dropped their ripe fruit and persimmons and delicious berries grew wild; and where, when the seasons changed, there was a handmade quilt to snuggle beneath with additional warmth from DiDi.

Then came that November night that changed everything. Nine days after my father's thirtieth birthday, my mother ran into our bedroom and roused DiDi and me. My father was groaning as he tossed about on his bed.

My mother was weeping, frantic: "Run! Go and get Mr. Wood. Tell him to come-now!"

In her distress, she rushed us from our little wooden house still barefoot and in our night clothes. A blast of cold air hit my sister and me. In the dead of night, trembling, terrified, we ran along that dark dirt road with the moon as our only light.

Grandfather(we called him Papa) and my grandmother came the next day and gathered my sister and me with our belongings into their car. I did not know it at the time, but that trip would change our world forever. I would never see Yellow Kid again.

Grandmother's house in the Florida Panhandle was a place where all the grownups were crying: Mom, Grandmother, my aunts, everybody. I cried, too, because they were crying. For the first time, I heard the word dead. It was in the same sentence as Daddy. I had no idea what it meant, but I would later discover that the awful word meant I would never see my father again.

Mom found work-back-bending domestic toil. Overworked and underpaid, she would come home exhausted and short-tempered.

Then my nightmares began. In them, my mother was dead also, and I would scream for her to come back. I never told a soul about those dreams.

As life unfurled, there were other losses: Great-Grandmother. Papa. Grandmother. Cousins who died young; aunts and uncles.

Later in my life, a husband would follow; and the greatest blow, the most surreal, my one and only sister, DiDi. Grief, which I had learned to contain, to hide, sometimes bordered on pathological. The losses were of people, though. Loved ones. I was expected to grieve. But there was another kind of sadness that became a silent companion from my girlhood to present: that of losing my pets.

My first encounter with this profound sorrow was when a little dog that we children named Skippy ran into the street. There was a squeal of brakes, a pitiful yelp. Papa gathered him and brought him back into the yard. It was pretty bad. But in my world, nobody "put down" animals-not pets, ever, to spare them from suffering. It was never thought of, simply not done.

We children begged Papa: "Take him to the dog doctor." He went back into the house without answering. All five of us grandchildren-a mélange of rambunctious siblings and first cousins-were angry with our usually obliging Papa. We had no idea how prohibitive veterinary costs were for a family of our meager means, or what a sacrifice it was for our grandparents to take in not only my sister, my mom, and me, but a young uncle and a couple of aunts with growing children also, all crammed into their tiny house.

So we watched as Skippy howled and whined in agony until he died. Earlier in my life, pets had simply disappeared. This was the first time I'd experienced the pain and grief and horror of watching helplessly the awful, heart-wrenching sights and sounds of the dying and the mesmerizing stillness that followed. It was indescribably sad; but in my world then, not considered cruelty. It was simply the way things were.

There were a number of other incidents over time, like when my beautiful little Morris-the-Cat look-alike was chased down, cornered, and stoned by mean neighborhood boys. By then I was a young adult, but I wept for days, overcome by the same consuming grief.

Over time, the losses spawned an overly protectiveness toward my pets. It set me on a grievous, pointless, impossible mission to preserve and protect them at all costs-the unconscious goal being to keep them as part of my world forever.

By midlife, most of us no longer entertain the belief that the road ahead is unending. Most have seen many key players on their life's stage enter and exit by then. It's part of the journey.

For me, though, with each of these exits, in spite of The Faith I've accepted and the promises of Scripture, I still find it a gargantuan task to struggle from beneath each new layer of grief. I dread the sneakiness of it, its rudeness in barging in unexpected.

Anything can trigger it. A memory. A photograph. A thought. And for me, the grief is just as deep, just as agonizing, just as real for pets as for humans. It's even more poignant in a way, because there's plenty of consolation when humans depart: "He's with The Lord. She's in a better place. You'll see him/her again."

But for our pets, comes only the terrible pronouncement of finality: "God did not give them souls. They have no eternal life. They're only animals. When they die, they're gone and that's it." I know there is ongoing congregational, pulpit, and denominational debate regarding the fate of our departed animal friends-discussion about whether or not they are, or have, souls or spirits.

That brings me to my most recent loss and how I still struggle with it.

Her name was Samantha. She was a little black beauty with sparkling green eyes and one white whisker among sprays of ebony. Even in her prime, she never weighed more than six pounds or so. She turned nineteen this year. Very old for a cat. In her prime, she was a jumper. You could easily find her atop a bookcase, the étagère, and now and then prowling the countertops. Her endearing independence and aloofness added to her a fascinating touch of the wild.

As time took its toll, she became arthritic, was diagnosed with progressive kidney failure, and weighed only three pounds. Her veterinary care and medications cost a small fortune.

The well-meaning hinted with their eyes: You should have her "put down." I did not. I could not, because old beliefs die hard. Besides, those many trips to the vet were always to heal, to make her better. Anything else, I felt, was betrayal.

Besides, along with our other two cats, Chief and Sabrina, Samantha had showered us with so much of that uncomplicated and unconditional love unique to the animals that choose to share our world. How could I do less than my best for her?

In her final few days, she would follow me around or simply stand close by, watching me. When I sat on the couch, she would lay her tiny head on my foot. I think she was saying, "Thanks, I've had a good life," and "Good-bye."

On her final day, she refused breakfast and seemed to have trouble breathing and swallowing. I offered her drops of water, and she refused them. A few minutes later, she slipped away.

Time, as always, won again. It is the way of things. But old questions I've pondered over the years returned to nag me. Is there really no possibility that another realm exists for the winged fellows and four-leggeds that love us and bond with us? What does Scripture say about animals? How does it evaluate our love for them? Are there hints of something more than what we know or believe?

So I launched an investigation of Scripture. Here's some of what I found.

Numbers 22:27-28 gives an account of Balaam's donkey:

"And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam. And Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.

"And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?"

Primates have been taught sign language. Studies reveal that certain birds give appropriate responses to human prompts. Some animals even demonstrate rather complex problem-solving abilities. If God decided to "open" their mouths, what, I wonder, could these creatures tell us? How much do they really know and understand?

2 Samuel 12:3 tells about the poor man and a little ewe lamb, "...which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter."

The story continues in 2 Samuel 12:5-6, when King David responds to Nathan the prophet regarding the life of that same ewe lamb which had been slaughtered by a rich man who'd had other options among his own flock:

"And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity."

There is, of course, more to this story; but it clearly demonstrates King David's understanding of and compassion for the deep feelings that exist between people and the animals they love.

Psalm 150:6 states: "Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord." But what is the height, length, depth, and breadth of this command as it refers to the winged, the furred, and feathered, along with all others creatures that breathe?

Proverbs 12:10 says, "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel."

In Ecclesiastes 3:21, even King Solomon, referred to in Scripture as the wisest man of all, pondered this one: "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"

Matthew 10:29 states, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."

Other Scriptures also give me pause to wonder, and both are in the most mysterious book in all the Bible:

Revelation 19:11 states, "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war."

A horse in heaven? It piques my curiosity, indeed! I have heard it referred to as a "spirit horse."

Luke 24:37-39, however, gives this account of the risen Lord when He appeared to his astonished disciples: "But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. "And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have."

So, if Jesus said of himself that He is not a spirit, why a spirit horse? Indeed, it makes me wonder.

What awes me even more, though, are the unfathomable verses John penned in Revelation 10:3-4:

"...and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. "And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not."

Isaiah 28:10 directs us how to interpret Scripture: "...precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little."

But the sealing of the seven thunders' utterances stops us cold. The curious are given no direction, no context within which to search for answers. We can only wonder. And I do: Could the answers to all of the questions not addressed in Scripture be bound up in what the seven thunders spoke, including what happens to our animal friends when they cross the portal and we see them no more?

Our two surviving cats are now seniors also, ages 14 and 10. When the time comes, I wonder: will I allow them to suffer while doing my best to prolong their lives, as I did with Samantha? I really don't know. It will be a tough call.

But even the thought that perhaps-just perhaps-there is something for them beyond what we can know or even imagine makes my grief and my dread of their loss a little easier to bear.

K.B. Schaller, journalist, novelist and conference speaker, is author of Gray Rainbow Journey (National Best Books Award Winner, USA Book News) and Journey by the Sackcloth Moon (both OakTara). She lives in South Florida, where she is currently writing the third novel in the Journey series. http://www.kbschaller.com.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from The Holy Bible (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode Limited), with grateful thanks.