Obligation, meaning, and pets

lessons in mortality

We had lost a cat in 2007 and, in our grieving process, we went to the Humane Society in Fairfax, Virginia, to look for a kitten. We left that day with a huge (20 pound) adult cat that the shelter had named Big Boy. Everyone at the shelter loved him. He was so charismatic - as soon as they let him out of the cage to visit, he took charge of the room. So of course we took him home. He had been found in a park somewhere and no one knew his origin story. Big Boy was just a funny name the shelter had come up with, so we thought we would change it once we got to know him a bit, but as it turned out, that was the best name for him. The name stuck. When we took him to our vet, the vet estimated he was between three and five years old based on his teeth, but we never really knew. He traveled with us from Virginia to San Antonio to the Last Homely House here in Durham. He was a handful when he was young. He would go cause some trouble, and then when we got mad at him, he would get into his box. So my youngest made this sign. The picture above is from 2010 and is one of my favorites of him. Our vet up here once said he had massive amounts of “cat-itude”. With age he mellowed and became more and more of a lap cat. But whenever he was hungry or wanted something, he would chase the dog (a 70 pound boxer-Walker coon hound mix) because he knew that would get a reaction out of us. So he never really mellowed all that much until the very end. Which was yesterday. By the end he had dropped to about seven pounds and was having trouble walking, so we knew it was time. Probably past time, but it was so hard to say goodbye to our friend of sixteen years, and we selfishly held on a little longer than was right.

(Big Boy and I just before we left for his last ride.)

Studies show that having pets provides greater happiness and meaning (here and here, for example, but lots of others) in our lives. In the framework of obligation and meaning that I have been developing, the structure and duties of being a pet owner create meaning by having a creature be dependent on us. There is mutual affection between pets and their owners, but it is the human who, through her/his actions can ensure the pet reaches self-actualization at each stage of her/his life. The last, and perhaps hardest stage is, of course, a good death. 

Pets can provide meaning in my framework in that they clearly provide a source of connection. It is easy to love a cat or dog because they return that affection with such generosity. Big Boy was more of a cat-dog than a cat-cat - whenever we came home from shopping or being out, he would be waiting in the window watching for us, and would come running, along with the dog, when we came in the door. Being a good owner can also provide a sense of competence and a sense of contribution - pets are relatively helpless without the care of their owners. They give us rapid feedback when we do something that makes them happy, training us to do more of that. One of the great things about cats and dogs is they help us be in the present. Dogs are the great Zen masters of being in the moment, and letting the past go. Cats too, though maybe with a little more reserve. 

Pets represent a significant investment of time, effort, and resources. Dogs take quite a bit more effort to care for than cats, but even cats require a degree of effort to properly care for them. Big Boy certainly made sure we were up by 6:30 AM each day to feed him, and chaos ensued if he wasn’t fed by 5 PM. if his box got overfull, he would simply make deposits elsewhere in protest. I have friends who work in the animal rescue industry and I hear about the owners who realize that having a pet sounded like a good idea in concept, but the obligation was beyond what they were able to provide. Many of these pets wind up neglected or abused, so it is better in many cases that the pets find their way to rescues. Even though the typical dog or cat lives less than 20 years, that still represents a long-term obligation with changing and evolving care requirements. A pet takes up some of our productive capacity and reduces the amount of slack in our lives. 

Most pets (I am thinking of dogs and cats, especially) have much shorter lives than humans, and the stages of their lives go by in a few years while humans might only go from one to another. To be a good owner, I think we have to respect that the pet is going through those transitions much faster than we are. Our obligation is to help them age gracefully through those stages and appreciate them at each. In some sense, helping them through their shortened stages is a useful preparation for our own aging. 

I remember reading a science fiction novella when I was a kid and the plot was that everyone except one man had been able to receive a treatment that would allow them to stop aging and effectively live forever (so long as the didn’t get run over by a bus or some other accident). The one man was an entertainer - a song-and-dance guy - and he was very popular because as he aged, he was slowing down and this became a source of fascination for the non-aging population. His on-again, off-again girlfriend showed up toward the end of the book and explained that she had kept pets to practice caring about a creature that she knew would grow old and die, so that she could better care for him. I tried to find the book, but I’m not coming up with the title - if anyone knows this story, let me know and I’ll update this post. In a sense, pets are memento mori (Latin for remember you have to die). As in the novel, they provide us practice loving other beings whose lives are only temporary things. They remind us of our own mortality.

We will miss our Big Boy. He taught us to be better humans.