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17412. Magoseph - 11/7/2005 2:12:49 PM I keep thinking about Scott’s daughter and her recent loss and I wonder now how old she is. If I remember well, she was fourteen when Scott stopped posting in the Mote for a few years .
I think about the time when I lost a dog, shortly before I left France and how the pain always stayed with me. While the boys grew up, I never became involved too much with their pets, except for seeing to their physical care. Now, we have Butch, definitely belonging to Flexy and depending on me for his care--a state of affairs that suits me just fine. 17413. ScottLoar - 11/7/2005 2:27:16 PM She's twenty now. Kitty was part of her childhood and as typical of the house as her schoolbooks. 17414. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 2:50:30 PM What a bunch of maudlin whining over a pet cat that lived a long life! Get another cat. Get another life. Cremating a cat and saving the ashes. Get real! 17415. Magoseph - 11/7/2005 3:05:03 PM :(
Ouch, that hurts, Wonk! 17416. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 3:11:02 PM Hey! The cat lived a long and, no doubt, pampered life and died. You'd think she'd lost a child or sibling. I wonder how much she spent on veterinarian bills. I have a friend who has an old dog sick with cancer. He's been conned into expensive radiation treatments which are likely to prolong the dog's life no more than a few months. I suggested he donate the money to Louisiana or Pakistan disaster relief rather than waste the money on a dog with a fatal disease. He was a bit offended by my cruel suggestion. Where I grew up a merciful shot to the dog's or horse's head solved the problem. 17417. ScottLoar - 11/7/2005 3:30:35 PM I agree to a merciful shot to the head rather than prolong misery but as I wrote, the cat died peacefully in its sleep, nothing untoward, nothing extraordinary save it was enfeebled.
Surely my daughter can discriminate between the loss of her pet cat and, for example, her aunt, but it must be a blunt mind or a dead heart that fails to understand affection and denies sympathy.
All of which is good reason to never again reveal too much about oneself in a public forum. 17418. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 4:02:46 PM Your daughter has my sympathy. Apparently my comment on costly, heroic veterinary efforts was misplaced. However,wonder how much it cost to have the animal cremated? I have grieved over the deaths of pets--a dog and several cats. We now have a seventeen-year-old cat that is starting to show signs of old age. However, we don't plan to give a bunch of money to a veterinarian to prolong his life. Rich people in California spend thousands to bury their pets in cemeteries that rival the finest human cemeteries. This is grotesque, in my opinion, not to mention wasteful of scarce resources. 17419. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 4:03:48 PM Too much money in this country is wasted on human death and funeral rituals, let alone on pets. 17420. PelleNilsson - 11/7/2005 4:52:40 PM I'm with wonkers. I don't understand this maudlin agonizing over the death of animals. 17421. Magoseph - 11/7/2005 5:09:46 PM This is not my day—first I manage to aggravate the tone of a conversation about a cat and then I write a silly post in the International thread. Time to shill for a while! See you all tomorrow. 17422. alistairConnor - 11/7/2005 5:39:09 PM Well, I find it perfectly normal and natural to mourn the death of a friend, albeit of the feline persuasion.
As the usual suspect in matters of cantankerous misanthropy, I award a Golden Harrumph apiece to Pelle and Wonk. 17423. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 5:47:09 PM I'll display it with pride! 17424. PelleNilsson - 11/7/2005 5:53:51 PM Can one in fact be misanthropic about animals? 17425. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 6:01:03 PM I don't think so. Good point! 17426. thoughtful - 11/7/2005 6:34:51 PM well i've mourned heartily for many pets i've owned over the years. esp since we have no children, our pets are part of our family. I've spent more on them than i ever thought i would, though even I have my limits.
Old cat had detached retina and vet started talking about laser treatments on her eye by a cat ophthamologist...I said What??? like she can't see to drive or read the phone book? That clearly didn't happen
17427. Ms. No - 11/7/2005 6:58:44 PM Scottloar,
I'm sorry for your family's loss. Be assured that there are many more of us who understand and empathize than feel the need to ridicule that which they simply don't understand. 17428. judithathome - 11/7/2005 7:35:39 PM Ditto.
Maybe Pelle and Wonkers need to get a pet. On second thought, scratch that. 17429. wonkers2 - 11/7/2005 8:11:21 PM FYI, I have a 17-year old cat named Sparky that I care a lot for. But when he begins to fail I don't plan on any big vet bills. And when he dies we aren't planning to have a funeral, cremation, etc. The growing prevalence of big vet bills (medical bills, also, perhaps) for pets, let alone pet funeral rituals, are a sign of a society that has more than its share of the world's income. Feeling sad about the death of a pet is one thing, big spending to prolong its life is something else. 17430. PelleNilsson - 11/7/2005 8:16:41 PM We have had pets. When they have gone we have missed them. and we still have fond memories of them. But I think words like "mourn" and "grief" are too emotionally loaded and too important to use about animals, who briefly shared our lives. Perhaps this has to do with my farm background. The good farmer loves his animals and tries to give them as good a life as possible. But when the time comes to send them to slaughter he is not sentimental about it. It is part of the cycle. 17431. Ms. No - 11/7/2005 9:38:42 PM How you do or don't feel about your own pets is your business, what I object to is telling someone else that they ought not to feel as they do when they lose a pet.
That's pointless and rude at the very least.
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