How Animals Grieve

by Barbara J. King

  But a second common thread links Fritz’s story with those of Willa and Maxwell: when a tiny black kitten showed up on the family’s patio and ran indoors, Fritz perked up. He began right away to play with the kitten, named Scooter by the family. Once again, a new and younger partner abated at least some of the grief.

  Mourning may cross even species lines, as we will see again in later chapters. Kathleen Kenna’s fifteen-year-old cat Wompa reacted strongly when the family dog, eight-year-old Kuma, died after a long illness. Wompa had regularly allowed the dog to groom her, and the two acted like best buddies. (Meanwhile, the other cat in the house had nothing to do with the dog.) A few days after Kuma succumbed to cancer, Wompa began to moan loudly. The strange, intermittent crying, which sounded “like a banshee” to Kathleen, lasted for several days. The cat also shifted her nighttime sleeping place to the spot at the end of the bed where Kuma had slept.

  After I discussed animals’ responses to death on a radio program, listener Laura Nix e-mailed me about two cats called Dusty and Rusty, who had lived with her friends for many years. They were sisters, but they were no Willa and Carson! Their relationship was downright antagonistic, to the degree that they carved up the house into two territories: Dusty lived upstairs, and Rusty lived downstairs. When Dusty began to fail, in her old age, she was cared for lovingly by Laura’s friend. On the night that she died, indeed, at the moment she died, Rusty—who was, as always, downstairs and apart from her sister—let out a single howl. Laura notes, “It was the only time I ever heard her make such a sound. I can’t tell you how she apparently knew.”

  Although I live surrounded by cats and am attuned to the possibility of animal grief, I have never witnessed cat mourning. We have lost cats to illness and old age, but the only emotional disruption in the household came from our own grief. Perhaps part of the explanation is that the cats we lost were primarily attached to us rather than to the other cats. Our cats are rescues, and we have a lot of them. Six live indoors with us, and twice that number reside in a spacious pen in our yard. Nestled under trees, sturdily built, with a two-story cat hotel and other hidden grottoes for warmth and shelter, the pen offers sanctuary to these cats, most of whom had lived as part of a feral colony at a public boat landing on the York River, not far from our house. At one point, a few people, annoyed by the colony’s presence, threatened to harm the cats. Building the pen was my husband’s answer to that threat. As hard as we work to reduce the feral-cat population to zero through spay-neuter programs, we want to help the cats who need us right now.

  We enjoy the company of these small creatures, no longer have to fend for themselves against hunger, dogs, coyotes, and uncaring humans. When I walk outside and enter the pen, I enjoy watching shy Big Orange sleep soundly under a bush, one-eyed Scout jump at a bug, and friends Dexter and Daniel relax together near the picnic table. Haley and Kaley, nicknamed “the white sisters,” have never been feral; when a friend called urgently seeking someone who would adopt the two together, before they were euthanized as unwanted, we took them in. These siblings are the most closely bonded of any cats in our care. Kaley is a bit heavier than her sister, with one eye blue, the other green. Haley has a darker smudge atop her head and “talks” more to us humans. The sisters seem hyperaware of each other’s location in the pen and most often choose to eat, rest, or bask in proximity to each other. We don’t know their precise ages, but they’ve been together since birth, at least three or four years. Haley and Kaley are far closer to each other than any other pair of cats we have had. What will happen when one of the white sisters dies? I hope we won’t find out for many years.

  Clearly, I’m 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 and a tiny white Chihuahua. The story itself was dismissive of the notion that dogs share enduring friendships. Dogs’ interactions lack the “constancy, reciprocity and mutual defense observed in species such as chimpanzees and dolphins,” wrote journalist Carl Zimmer. At this, dog people got hot under the collar. Led by animal behaviorist and dog trainer Patricia McConnell, they fired back that scientists underestimate dogs.

  Acts of dog-to-dog loyalty certainly exist. A video recorded in Chile shows cars and trucks whizzing by on a multilane highway. In the middle of the road a dog lies motionless. It has apparently been hit by a vehicle and is severely injured, if still a
live. Then into the frame comes a second dog, zigzagging through the traffic. This dog isn’t very big, but he (or she) exudes a sense of determined purpose. He safely reaches the injured dog and begins to drag him to the median, even as cars zoom past. As a rescue worker approaches the two dogs, the video abruptly stops.

  The video’s narration is in Spanish, but none of us can fail to see what has happened: One dog has risked his life for another. From ensuing newspaper reports, we know that the injured dog died and the second dog ran off. Here again, as with Hachi and Mr. Enyo, we see no expression of dog grief. But in this case we have no back story, no idea of the circumstances. Were the two dogs friends with a shared history? Were they related to each other? No one knows. The rescuer dog was never found, a disappointing outcome for the people who expressed a desire to adopt him. Nonetheless, as one newspaper put it, that brave dog elicited “worldwide admiration” once the video clip went viral. I like to think that this incident in Chile invited millions of people to reflect on the depth of dog emotion.

  A happier outcome for a dog hit by a car is reported by Stanley Coren in Modern Dog (a publication with the delightful tag line “the lifestyle magazine for modern dogs and their companions”). Mickey, a Labrador retriever, and Piercy, a Chihuahua, were fast friends who lived together in a family’s home. Mickey was the older, and of course, much bigger of the pair. One day, Piercy ran into traffic and was struck by a car. The family, crying over the body, placed their pet in a sack and buried him in a shallow grave in their garden. Even Mickey seemed to express sorrow; the big Lab sat at the grave even after the rest of the family retired to bed.

  Sometime later, the father of the family was awakened by unusual noises coming from outside. He thought he heard a dog’s whining. Going outside to investigate, he found an open grave and an empty sack—and Mickey feverishly attending to his small friend. As the man watched, Mickey licked Piercy’s face and nuzzled Piercy’s body. He carried out these actions with great energy, as if trying to revive Piercy. The man thought these attempts hopeless. But in a flash his certainty faded: he saw a spasm run through Piercy’s body, then watched, astonished, as Piercy lifted his head and whimpered.

  Mickey’s acute hearing may have picked up sounds coming from Piercy’s grave as the little dog found himself buried alive—cues that the man, or any other human being, could not possibly have heard. Or maybe it was the legendary canine sense of smell that tipped Mickey off. Whatever sensory capacities may have been involved, Mickey’s love and loyalty must be fitted into the explanatory mix. If the big Lab hadn’t felt such a bond with his tiny friend, he wouldn’t have stayed vigilant by the grave, nor would he have labored so hard to extricate and revive the Chihuahua. Without Mickey, Piercy would surely have suffocated.

  Reports of heroic acts like those carried out by Mickey and the dog in Chile come along rarely. But they point toward a capacity for the emotions that may underlie dog grief. When two dogs enjoy each other’s company and are keenly attuned to each other’s whereabouts, actions, and moods, the conditions are right for one to mourn when the other dies.

  Almost no scientific research has been carried out on dog grief. A recent wave of studies into aspects of dog cognition, however, supports the notion that dogs are incredibly sensitive to others around them. In a series of experiments, psychologists Brian Hare and Michael Tomasello found that domestic dogs outperform chimpanzees at comprehension of human gestures. The test they describe is beautiful in its simplicity: A person hides a desired food or object in one of several opaque containers, then points or directs her gaze toward the baited container. The question is, will a watching animal follow this cue and head straight for the correct container in order to grab its reward?

  If the animal in question is a human, and over fourteen months of age, the answer is consistently yes. The same is true for domestic dogs, who make a beeline to the container concealing the treat. In fact, dogs succeed even when the experimenter complicates the task by standing a meter away from the containers and pointing with the cross-lateral hand, or pointing to the right container while walking toward the wrong one.

  Chimpanzees don’t do nearly as well on these tests. The key to success for at least some nonhuman animals seems not to be pure brain power, but instead a lengthy period of mutual attunement with humans. Thanks to their history of domestication, dogs have had extensive “practice” reading the movements of human companions. DNA science, together with archaeological research, tells us that dogs and humans initiated this process over ten thousand years ago, maybe even as early as fifteen thousand years ago. The first domesticated dogs probably came from China or the Middle East, but the human-dog bond in prehistory was also widespread across Europe and Africa. When the first settlers crossed the Bering Strait into North America, they had dogs as their companions.

  This exquisitely attuned dog-human relationship, set in motion by the domestication process, also affects what happens between dogs themselves. Of course, dogs evolved from wolves, animals with strong, pack-oriented social tendencies. The combination of biology and socialization has a powerful effect. In this regard, Hare and Tomasello report an exciting result: On the hidden-object test, dogs do equally well whether cues are provided by humans or by other dogs. Though I’m not certain how dogs indicate to other dogs the baited container, the take-home point is clear: Dogs are incredibly attentive to other dogs. What sometimes gets overlooked in research like Hare and Tomasello’s is the emotion that may be woven through such acute dog-to-dog attention.

  From the dozens of stories that have come my way about dogs mourning other dogs, a powerful trio of characteristics can be distilled: love, loyalty, and smarts. Often, the tales are shared by a person who loved a dog who has died and now worries about the emotional health of a surviving dog in the household. Such was the case with a member of my own family.

  For sixteen years, Connie Hoskinson lived with a tiny silky terrier named Sydney. Connie and Sydney strolled through their suburban Virginia neighborhood for forty-five minutes every day, greeting friends and neighbors as they went. Back at the house, though, there was no question but that Sydney preferred the company of Connie’s husband George.

  When George’s health began to fail, Sydney’s devotion only increased. Near the end of his life, George could no longer rise easily from the sofa or bed, and Sydney altered his activities to stay with him. He brought his toys directly to George’s lap, timed his naps to George’s so the two would curl up together, and followed George to the bathroom, returning to lie down only when George did.

  Then George died. The change was a tough one for Sydney, as it was for Connie. “For almost a year,” Connie told me, “Sydney didn’t have much to do with me. After that, he became my dog.” Sydney’s vibrant personality brought much pleasure to Connie. Even in the early days with Connie and George, he had enjoyed sitting on the piano stool and playing notes. When a person would play, he’d “sing” along. Later, after George was gone, he became closely attuned to Connie’s moods. When Connie cried, her habit was to put her hands up to her face. In a show of concern, Sydney would try to pull her hands down.

  SYDNEY AND ANGEL. PHOTO BY CONSTANCE B. HOSKINSON.

  When Sydney was thirteen years old, Connie adopted a second dog, an adult Maltese named Angel. Sydney’s life changed again. He took great pleasure in the company of his new friend—so much, that he defected from his nightly sleeping spot on Connie’s bed and joined Angel in the kitchen. For three years the pair slept side by side, Sydney in his blue dog bed and Angel in her pink one.

  Then, suddenly, Angel died of a heart attack. Terribly upset, Connie awaited the arrival of a neighbor who would help her bury Angel. She placed Angel’s body back in her small pink bed. Sydney crawled into that bed and lay with his head on Angel’s still form.

  Angel was buried that day. For the next three weeks, Sydney searched the house for her. One time, Connie found him in the laundry room, where Angel’s bed was waiting to be washed. Sydney ha
d pushed the bed over, apparently looking for Angel. Soon, he began to eat poorly, a pattern that only worsened over the three weeks. Despite counsel from a vet, and Connie’s constant affection and offers of all kinds of food, Sydney lost weight. The thinner he became, the more worried Connie became.

  Sydney had resumed sleeping in Connie’s bed, reverting to the pattern of his pre-Angel days. One morning, Connie awoke to find that he had died during the night. She believes that Sydney just couldn’t survive the loss of Angel.

  Connie recalls what happened when she next took a neighborhood walk—her first one alone in sixteen years. “When my neighbor walked out to the street to meet me,” she told me, “he was holding out his arms, because he knew for me to be walking alone, it had to be that my constant companion was gone.”

  To witness the mourning of a surviving animal can be a second blow, following close on the death of a pet. An online discussion of dog grief brought forth a cry for help in this regard. A woman’s eighteen-year-old dachshund, Ginger, had been euthanized on a vet’s recommendation. After fourteen years shared with Ginger, the woman felt her loss deeply. Her sad state was compounded when her second dog, an eight-year-old who had lived with Ginger since the age of six weeks, began to decline, much as Connie’s Sydney had. It got to the point where the younger dog, Heidi, simply refused to eat. Her sleep was terribly disrupted as well. Ginger and Heidi had always eaten together, the woman reported, and they loved the same treats. “The treats are the only thing now that Heidi has even a slight interest in.” The woman sought help: how could she help ease Heidi’s grief ?

  In response to queries of this kind, Modern Dog magazine offered tips for dog owners in a sidebar to the article in which Mickey and Piercy were featured. Statistics from the ASPCA’s Companion Animal Mourning project indicate that two-thirds of dogs exhibit negative behavioral changes after losing another dog from their household; these changes may linger for up to six months.