How Animals Grieve Read Online Free PDF Page A

cat-preoccupied. Yet there’s another reason why I chose to launch this book with a chapter on cat mourning. Words like “aloof” and “independent” are often used to describe cats’ personalities. When my former dean at the College of William and Mary joked that trying to achieve consensus among faculty members is “like herding cats,” everyone laughed. Immediately, we grasped the cross-species analogy. It’s an old stereotype, pitting independent, almost rogue cats against ultraloyal, comparatively tractable dogs. And there’s some truth to it: dogs evolved from pack animals and are, on average, more attuned to humans than cats. But individual cats, depending on their personalities, may bond with other cats and with people just as deeply as dogs bond with other dogs and with people. And when death comes for one cat, that bonding may lead to mourning for the survivor.
    Willa is a survivor. By all appearances, she enjoys Amy’s company. Even so, Amy isn’t Carson. Willa lives on without her sister—but in a very real sense, it’s a sister that Willa remains.

2
    A DOG’S BEST FRIEND
    Grief is often born from love. That’s the single most beautiful thing I’ve come to appreciate through more than a year’s immersion in reading and writing about bereavement.
    With dogs, love is often easy to see, especially the whole-body love they share with us. Energy courses through every muscle to wag the body as much as the tail; liquid eyes overflow with their joy at our company. Dog love is entwined with loyalty, a canine trait that’s the stuff of legends.
    Visitors to Tokyo sometimes make a pilgrimage to the Shibuya train station to view a statue of an Akita dog named Hachiko. Hachiko, or Hachi, as he was nicknamed, was born in 1923 and adopted soon after by Eisaburo Enyo, a professor at Tokyo’s Imperial University. Every day the professor walked from his home to Shibuya station to board the train that took him to his office. And every day, Hachi trotted by his side. When Mr. Enyo’s morning train departed, the dog returned home—only to return later, to meet the evening train.
    For over a year, this was their pattern. Then Mr. Enyo died, suddenly, at his university office. Hachi was left waiting at the station for his friend who would never again come home. For more than ten years, he continued this ritual, going each morning to Shibuya station and waiting quietly. Even in old age, when he moved more stiffly, Hachi maintained his vigil, seeking the one face that mattered to him. In 1935 Hachi died. Every April 8, dog lovers honor his memory during a ceremony at the train station, held in front of Hachi’s statue. A Japanese film based on the story was released in 1987; a 2009 American remake stars Richard Gere as Mr. Enyo.
    I tear up when I think of Hachi: nothing dissuaded this dog from his loyal and hopeful waiting. He remembered his friend and acted, not as if grieving or depressed, but in a wholly purposeful manner, as if he expected to see him again at any moment. Most of us, I think, long to matter to someone as much as Mr. Enyo mattered to Hachi. Just as importantly, we long to be remembered after we are gone as Hachi remembered Mr. Enyo. In Alexander McCall Smith’s novel
The Charming Quirks of Others
, the character Isabel, a philosopher, quotes a line from Horace to her partner Jamie:
Non omnis moriar
, I shall not wholly die. She then remarks, “Only if there were nobody at all left to remember would death be complete.”
    Hachi’s story is about love and loyalty across species lines. But what about dogs’ interactions with each other? We regularly see the dogs we live with or encounter around town playing joyfully together, or slipping back and forth between mild conflict and relaxed companionship. But is there genuine love and loyalty among dogs?
    Time
magazine ignited a small firestorm among dog lovers with a cover that blared “Animal Friendships” above a photograph of a big brown hound