Where have all the good pets gone?

MICHELE MARR

On one of the first few days of January, I was drawn into a “Pardon

My Planet” single-panel cartoon -- not a comic I read as a rule in

the Los Angeles Times.

It was a scruffy white cat, lying with clear satisfaction, on the

back of a pen-and-ink sofa in the panel that got my attention; he

could very well have been our cat Wayne.

The cartoon shows a small family sitting dead-center on a couch,

Dad in the middle with his left arm around Mom and right arm around

Junior.

To the right of Junior sits a dog, an attentive mutt that appears

eager and is smiling. The cat that looks like a picture of Wayne

sits, eyes closed, above Mom’s shoulder, no doubt purring.

Suspended in a mortise over the dog’s noggin are his thoughts:

“Aah, family.” Drifting serenely above the unperturbed cat are his:

“Aah, staff.”

As my eyes followed the cat’s left leg, which hangs dead weight

over the edge of the sofa’s back along with his white bushy tail, I

thought, “Aah, pets.”

Some people don’t cotton to being on their pets’ staff and maybe

that’s why they prefer dogs. But I wouldn’t trade anything in this

world for the privilege God gave me to care for our two feline girls,

Ginger and Mitzi, and Wayne.

Wayne outlived Ginger by nearly six years and he outlived Mitzi by

three, which gave him three good years to be king of our domicile.

The day I spotted the “Pardon My Planet” cartoon, I knew I was

just days or even hours away from losing him, too. It’s been just

nine days since my husband and I had to let go of him.

His veterinarian, Dr. Pasco, bent and kissed his head and told him

what a trooper he’d been.

Wayne lived 20 years, and beat cancer for more than five, before

it and its complications came back for him. Pasco affectionately

referred to him both as a survivor and a “Disney World of

pathologies.”

Last week, my husband and I took turns stroking his head and

whispered our goodbyes to him.

“It’s time to return to your creator,” I told Wayne. “He’ll be the

one to heal you, to make you feel better now. God willing, we’ll see

soon but not too soon.”

Like the sentiments expressed in the prose titled “Rainbow Bridge”

on the sympathy card that Pasco sent us after Wayne’s death, my

words, I know, are drawn on hope as much as anything.

“Just this side of heaven lies the Rainbow Bridge,” begins the

card, which promises that the day will come when we’ll cross that

bridge to heaven with our pets.

I’m not alone in my hope. Will Rogers once said, “If there are no

dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”

And Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “You think that dogs will not be

in Heaven? I tell you, they will be there before any of us.”

Nineteen months ago, when I wrote in this column about a friend of

mine and a friend of my mother’s each losing a beloved pet, I

mentioned another cartoon, a “Frank and Ernest,” I’d come across at

the time.

In that comic, an angel addresses a man standing at the pearly

gates seeking admittance into heaven.

“If you don’t mind throwing tennis balls for eternity, I do have

an opening in doggie heaven,” the angel tells the man.

My questions that day were these: Is there a doggie heaven? A cat

heaven? A hamster, fish, bird or ferret heaven? Do pets go to heaven

at all?

I’d never gotten as much mail in response to a column and I

haven’t gotten as much response from any column since.

Many grieving hearts, it seems, yearn for an answer. I tried to

find one then and I’ve been looking ever since.

I’ve found quite a few books, more articles and even more Internet

musings on the subject. A good many of the writers and authors delve

into Scripture to make their point.

More than a few resort to novel translations or Scripture

twisting.

What’s clear to me is something the Rev. Anne Robertson of St.

John’s United Methodist Church in Dover, N.H., wrote in her short

pamphlet, “Will Mr. Pooper go to Heaven?,” which tackles the question

and also includes a prayer for the loss of a pet.

The question, she says, is not as silly as some people think, but

“a serious question that deserves a serious answer.”

Her answer begins with what I’ve been forced to conclude: “The

Bible does not tell us whether or not our pets will enter heaven.” We

can only hope.

Robertson cites many scriptural passages (although I admit I don’t

always agree with her exegesis or use of them) to show how important

animals are to God, including those passages that tell of God

creating animals, calling them “good” and later saving them along

with mankind in Noah’s ark.

She writes, “God cares greatly for the animals” and “cares for

people even more” and, in the end, she concludes, “We can be sure, if

there is any way that God can work it out, we will find Mr. Pooper

and all the pets we have ever loved waiting for us in heaven.”

Sounds like good news to me, because the last time I checked, the

God of Methodist Christians, like the God of other Christian

denominations, is all-powerful.

Why wouldn’t he be able to work it out?

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].