Growing up, my family had four pets: Daisy, our blind and partially deaf yellow Labrador; Milo and Bear, our two personable and loving Tabby cats; and Joe, our blind and perpetually sick goldfish. Though the group was never alive at the same time, the four of them represented an emotional lineage that spanned over two decades—a lineage that punctuated our family’s history with their unwavering companionship, and one which linked us to people and places that, for varying reasons, no longer existed in the present. Joe, for example, never left the first house I grew up in; his diseased, fishy body finally succumbed to whatever fishy disease that plagued him, and we left that house and the shoebox we buried him in for a new one several hours away in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In this new house, many years later, we left Daisy behind, and in the apartment we moved into afterward, in Philadelphia’s Old City, we left Milo. And just last week, in the house my father now shares with my stepmother, Mindy, we left Bear. They buried him in one of my father’s t-shirts in a corner of the backyard that has many birds and the occasional chipmunk.
Losing Bear marked the end of a twenty-seven-year run of Klein family pets, and within those twenty-seven years, a lot of life happened. Just as I wrote about the ways our possessions can represent parts of ourselves, the same goes for our pets. For me, Bear symbolized the final thread connecting myself now to myself then. For my father, Bear acted as a bridge between his life with Mindy, his life alone in Philadelphia, and his life together with my mother in that suburbs house. When Milo died a few years ago, it was devastating not only because he was an incredible cat, but that his death closed out my connection to my mother, who had loved him immensely. I remember once during a dinner with her and my father—my brother, by that time, had moved away to college—Mom turned to Milo, who was sitting in the seat beside hers, and said: “You better not outlive me, or I’ll be pissed.” We had only found out about her terminal cancer the month prior, in February 2014, and we dealt with the news by using humor, often at each other’s expense. Milo looked up at her with his large, knowing eyes. He would outlive her by six years, but luckily for him, she wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to be pissed. As if she could ever be angry with Milo anyway.
As a toddler, I viewed Daisy more like a sister, often sharing my SnackWell chocolate cookies with her beneath the dining room table—co-conspirators, I suppose, in dinner-spoiling and snack-stealing—though this might have contributed to her becoming diabetic later in life. But who’s to say, really (the statute of limitations has clearly expired). Daisy lived for many years despite her menagerie of health complications and passed away at the age of fourteen while I was away at summer camp. I still remember my mother collecting me into our Subaru wagon, tearful and beside herself with grief, as she held up Daisy’s well-worn collar. And even though I was only twelve or thirteen at the time, I understood that Daisy had been my mother’s dog, not ours; she had been the one to arrive at the local shelter, having just moved to the Pocono Mountains from Brooklyn with my father and brother, and had known almost immediately that Daisy was the one for us after a mouthful of kibble fell from Daisy’s mouth—ping ping pinging back into the metal bowl—after locking eyes with my mother through the kennel gate. Daisy was a gentle dog, never mischievous or misbehaved, and liked sleeping on the floor of my mother’s home office. This was drastically different from the way their dog before Daisy behaved. Mutley—a too-smart Border Collie that once snatched up wasabi from the table, only to have her eyes cross from the spice of it. I’ve heard stories about all of my parents’ pets from childhood and young adulthood—each one a tale of how much they had loved them, regardless of how good or bad their pets had been.
My parents did an excellent job of teaching my brother and me how to raise up, and care for, our pets. And what I think happened concurrently with that was witnessing firsthand what it meant to love something unconditionally, even if that something ultimately ended up being you. Part of what my parents did so well was show us how to live alongside animals, which in turn taught us how to care for ourselves and for those around us—that familial love extended to all members of a family, and with that love came an important responsibility to show up for our pets. I feel lucky to have learned those lessons in these twenty-seven years, and though I will miss them all dearly, their absence is only proof of just how much of our hearts we gave to them.
Thanks for reading 🤍
Rachel
Love the pictures your mom always was a cat lover beautifully written
The pets in your family were really like members of the family. I remember all the funny stories, the bad behavior, the crazy tricks, and especially all the love you shared. Thanks for including the photos.
There is a lot of Klein family history there.