Burying pets is never easy.  Especially in the rocks!  To be completely honest, I never expected much sadness when Gemini died.  She was my wife’s cat.  Never mine.  There was no love lost between “that beast” (as I affectionately called her) and myself.  We had a mutual disdain that seemed to work for us.  It was almost a game for me.  You could tell, though, that cat meant business!

I married two feline friends (I think it was Hemingway who said, “one cat just leads to another!”)   It was not my intention to fall in love with a lover of cats.  I’m a dog kind of a guy.  But when I got Stessa, she made it clear that she came with two cats, Ting and Gemini.  So when we decided to marry, we agreed that I would live with these two for a couple of years until they died and then that would be the end of it.  Ting and I got along really well after a time.  Gemini, not so much.  I used to take an afternoon power nap in my recliner.  Ting would rest on my chest.  I think Gemini considered her a traitor for that little indiscretion.

When we started dating they all lived in a mobile home.  Gemini fell out of the window one day.  She was a little overweight then and the screen just simply couldn’t hold her.  Gemini found a hole in the underpinning and slinked all the way back to the back corner of that trailer house.  Stessa called me, frantic.  So I did what every courting young man would do.  Flashlight in hand, I crawled on hands and knees the 80 feet through spiders and snake skins back in there to retrieve her.  She didn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I thought she should have but her owner did and finally showed enough mercy to marry me!

Never in my life would I have thought those cats would last 14 years!  Ting passed away a couple of years ago.  Gemini died on Tuesday.  I buried her on family land on Wednesday morning and never would have expected the tears that came with that task.  When you spend 14 years under the same roof with an animal, I guess they get into your heart whether you like it or not.

More than that, I love the woman who loved that cat.  Abraham Lincoln once said, “I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”  I can say, with absolute certainty that Gemini was loved with utter perfection.  To see my bride so completely undone by the grief is hard on all of us.  The kids will miss her.  My wife will grieve her beloved friend for years to come.  One day, in the not too distant future, we will lose the dog we got together just after our marriage ... and I too will be inconsolable for a time.

What is it about these creatures that jump into our hearts and stay?  Why do we love them so much that it pains us so deeply when they depart?  Could it be that it is because that kind of love is the natural thing for us to feel for all of God’s creation?  Mark Twain quipped, "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."   I wonder if we could learn to love our fellow humans as much as we love our animals.  Even better, maybe we could learn to love each other as much as our animals love us.  You know... the way they forgive our faults and mistakes and oversights?

Gemini and I never got along very well.  Still she brought joy into my home and into my heart and I buried her on Wednesday.  Join me today in giving thanks to her creator for the lessons our precious pets bring to us us and while you are at it, would you join me in prayer for my grieving spouse?