The cat who comforted

On the death of a pet.

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“I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead.” — Aslan, The Horse and His Boy

Last week, we laid to rest one of our two cats. His name was Dimitri, but we called him Meters.

He had been struggling with his health for quite some time. And over the last year, there were a few moments when we thought that this was it. But each time, he found another life, found a new level of stability, and carried on. There was no cure for his multiple conditions, and we talked often with the kids about that reality.

Even then, there’s nothing that can prepare you for when the time finally comes to put down a companion animal. Meters took a decided and definite turn for the worse two weekends ago. We scheduled an appointment with our vet. Over the next three or four days, we kept him comfortable, snuggled as much as possible, and started saying our farewells. Lindsey’s hospice nursing experience was a Godsend, and she knew exactly what to do.

When it was time to take him to the vet, Meters was camped out on his favorite spot on the back of our couch, sleeping in the low December sun. The tears were many. Everyone gave him one last embrace in his home. Lindsey took his paw prints on pieces of clay. He cried out only once or twice in the pet carrier.

We took the kids with us to the vet’s office. The drive was mostly silent. We were taken to a small room and we huddled around him as the doctor explained the procedure. As she went to prep the medications, I read Psalm 23. Or tried to. My voice wasn’t working quite right. And then came the end of his suffering and pain. Lindsey stroked his fur as he settled down for his long, final nap.

As I said, Meters had not been well for quite some time. He was not the cat he once was. He required a lot of attention and care. I never thought I would be that kind of pet owner, but I definitely became one over the months and months of dispensing meds and specialty kidney food. As the euthanasia was given, I did feel a wave of relief. And I also marveled at the paper-thin wall between life and death. After all these months of doing what we reasonably could for Meters and waiting for him to go, he was at last gone. And we wept.

On the drive home, we talked about the foolishness of trying to escape suffering in this life. About the surety of receiving comfort in Christ. We told some of our favorite stories about Meters.

Earlier that day, I had dug a grave in our backyard. (Nate Bargatze is right: there’s nothing harder than digging a hole in the ground.) We took Meters there. Lindsey had wrapped him a blanket inside a small box, and he was curled up like he did when he slept in his favorite spots around the house—on the couch in the sun or on the blue recliner. In Every Moment Holy, there’s a liturgy “For the Loss of a Living Thing,” and I barely managed to get through that and needed help from everyone to read it as we sat and stroked his fur one last time. The kids had drawn pictures of him, and these we laid inside the box before we laid him in the ground. The kids helped me fill the grave with dirt. They each grabbed a handful of landscaping rocks and set them over the mound. I was thankful for their help. And I think it was important for them to partake in this austere and heavy work.

I think we may have prayed the Lord’s prayer, and I think I found a couple words to say after the liturgy from Every Moment Holy. We may have even sung the verse from “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” the one about Jesus giving us “victory o’er the grave.” I’m thankful for the proper goodbye we gave him. It was as beautiful and meaningful as it was sorrowful. The “Liturgy for the Loss of a Living Thing” helped us lean into that seeming contradiction. Here’s how it ends. Tissues strongly recommended.

We know if no sparrow falls
beyond the ken of your compassion,
that you also, in this moment,
inhabit our sadness at this wounding,
your weeping at the world’s brokenness
somehow deeper than our own.

Be near us, O God.
Be near each of us who must reckon
with the sorrow of death
and the sting of separation,
for what we feel in this loss
is nothing less than the groan of all creation. . . .

We know that the final working of your redemption will be far-reaching,
encompassing all things in heaven and on earth,
so that no good thing will be lost forever,

so that even our sorrow at the loss
of this beloved creature will somehow,
someday, be met and filled,
and, in joy, made forever complete.

Comfort us in this meantime, O Lord,
for the ache of these days is real.

Amen.

And amen.

In the first few days after Meters died, I’d be walking around the house or whatever and then suddenly my chin would start to tremble as I tried to hold back sobs. I know I’m a pretty emo guy, but the continual waterworks had me wondering, what is the deal? Why does this hurt so much?

Meters was 12 in human years, which made him about 65 in cat years. Lindsey brought him and his brother, Ivan (who is alive and plump and happy), home from the humane society in the summer of 2013. (They’re Russian Blues, hence the very Russian names.) They were tiny, 2-month-old fuzzballs who loved us as much we loved them. They were and remain the first and only pets Lindsey and I have owned since getting married.

They were also the first lives we opened up our home and hearts to. By the summer of 2013, we were beginning to realize that the wilderness of infertility might last longer than initially thought. Lindsey found these two litter mates, and they became part of our family before the first of our actual kids arrived a little over two years later.

Let me be perfectly pugilistic: pets are not kids. They are not “fur babies.” Furthermore, adoption is a human activity, a reflection of heavenly realities, a sacred activity that can only involve those made in the imago dei. Pets cannot be adopted. Rescued, perhaps, but not adopted. Their birth certificate does not retroactively take on your last name. Let us not make categorical or ontological errors here.

And yet, as a good friend of mine said, pets do get into your soul. Meters certainly did. The companionship and comfort he and his brother have brought over the last 12 years were real and profound and a gift from God.

Before our kids came, Meters would trot up to greet me when I came home from work, and I’d pick him up and sling him over my shoulder.

Before our kids came, Linds and I taught him how to play fetch with those little plastic scrunchy balls.

When our son was first placed with us, and all the world felt out of control, Lindsey and I had each other—and those two cats—to cling to in the uncertainty.

As our kids grew, Meters, who had a more social disposition than Ivan, became a kind of therapy cat, and would often fall asleep on the kids’ beds as we tucked them in at night.

There’s much more I could say about Meters and what his presence meant. He’d sit with me in the mornings at my writing station. In his last couple months, he would curl up against me on the coach when I laid down for a nap.

As I continued to come to tears in the days after we put Meters to rest, I realized that this comfort that I had experienced, and was now missing, was a fuzzy and outward sign of a larger spiritual reality. Christ is the ultimate comforter. And he is also the Big Cat of the tribe of Judah. What I’m trying to say is that the comfort of a cat is unique. As I wrote in my review of Weezer’s “Winter” EP, cats—not dogs—are the metaphor-bearers. And the comfort they offer is real.

A day or two after we said goodbye to Meters, I returned to the part of The Horse and His Boy when Shasta spends the night in the tombs of the kings. Shasta, the orphan boy, “the most unfortunate boy that ever lived in the whole world,” experienced the unique comfort of a cat:

And whether he really had been dreaming or not, what was not lying at his feet, and staring him out of his countenance with its big, green, unwinking eyes, was the cat; though certainly one of the largest cats he had ever seen.

“Oh, Puss,” gasped Shasta. “I am so glad to see you again. I’ve been having such horrible dreams.” And he at once lay down again, back to back with the cat as they had been at the beginning of the night. The warmth from it spread all over him.

Later, in Shasta’s even darker night of the soul, Aslan, walking alongside him, revealed how he had been present and active in the seemingly unfortunate events of his life:

“I was the lion. . . . I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.” [Emphasis mine.]

The Horse and His Boy is about an orphaned prince who, through the trials of foster care and long seasons in the wilderness, is brought safely home to his father, King Lune, by the care and comfort of the Lion, “the King above all High Kings in Narnia.”

Meters has given our family a glimpse of this bigger, truer story. The tears make sense. The glory makes sense, too.

The High King above all kings stooped toward [Shasta]. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.