I have to tell my sweet-souled son who is away at camp that our cat died this week. I’m not sure how to do it.
Tea Cake — named after a character in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” — was 17 years old. I had him most of my adult life, and for several years longer than I’ve known my husband.
He was a great cat, all black and panther-like. He ran down the sidewalk to greet me when I came home from work. He slept in the crook of my arm at night, often under the covers just like a human. He was really low maintenance. We didn’t have a litter box for years because he preferred to take care of business outside.
When we gave our daughter a kitten (Rosie) for her 7th birthday, John William wanted a pet, too. He asked if he could have a cat. I knew Dad wouldn’t go for that (he thought two cats was two too many), so I told him he could share Tea Cake with me.
He loved to carry Tea Cake into his room in the hopes he’d curl up on the bed with him while he read or played video games. He was overjoyed whenever Tea Cake would choose his lap to crawl into while we were watching a movie. And he wouldn’t move a muscle for fear of disturbing him. He laughed to see him play. He worried that he was getting old.
And now he’s gone. I wish I could say he died peacefully in his favorite chair on the porch, but I think a dog got him. We found him in the yard four houses down. He just wasn’t as quick as he used to be.
John William’s been at camp near Nashville, and we’re going to see him this weekend for a visit — he’s got another week of camp left. I don’t know whether to tell him then or wait till camp’s over. I think I would want to know, but I don’t want to ruin his last week of camp, either.
Advice?
Responses to “The dreaded conversation”
July 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
First of all, I am so very sorry for your loss. I had to put my sweet dog of 14 years to sleep about a month ago, and it still pains me.
This is a difficult situation for you. Surely if this were a human relative, you would want to tell your son. (I don’t think we need to get in a discussion here about pets being part of the family, like children, etc.) I think maybe you should tell him. Maybe not the circumstances, but just that Tea Cake is gone now. Take a picture of the kitty that your son can keep with him for the next week. Help him remember some happy times playing with the kitty. Then when your son gets home from camp, you can have a memorial for the kitty and help him grieve.
July 28th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
This is a great, albeit sad, teaching and learning opportunity for you and your son. Life, if lived fully, will be about loss of some type or another. The small losses, such as losing a pet, start teaching our children about life, death and the bigger losses they will face if nature follows a normal course: Parents should die before children, grandparents before parents, etc.
I would not tell him until he comes home, he is away from you and you want to be close to gauge his reactions and answer his questions. All things die eventually, and if you factually explain it, and allow that it is sad and you will miss your pet, it will help him adjust. The next questions may be about his death or yours and you can answer: “Yes, we all die, but you are not going to die for a long time, you are young and humans live longer than cats or dogs”.
And you may tell him you don’t know when you will die, but that you are doing everything to stay healthy so you can be around when he has his own family. Young children like assurances that their parents will not leave them but we must not lie to them, it is out of our control in the end. MM
July 31st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I don’t have any advice on how to tell your son that the cat has died, but shame on you for still letting a 17 year old cat roam the neighborhood. I’m sure that not having to have a litter box inside was a major factor in Tea Cake being outdoors, but loving an animal includes inconveniences and making a few personal sacrifices. It’s amazing that your cat lived as long as it did, since outdoor cats only have a life expectancy of around 2 years.
I don’t mean to be ugly to you, but for a beloved pet to have died in such a violent way, it’s just a shame that you didn’t love it enough to keep it indoors, out of harm’s way.
August 1st, 2007 at 7:51 am
To Cat Lover: Actually, I kept Tea Cake indoors for years, but he wanted to be outside. It was in his nature. When I rescued him, he was just a little kitten in the snow outside my uncle’s house in Illinois, staring up at the bird feeder. He was a hunter cat. Loved to be on the prowl.
When we moved into our house, we would find him outside and couldn’t figure out how he got there. Finally we found a small hole at the base of the house that led to the basement. He would go into the basement when the door was open and go out the hole. We plugged it up, but he would sit by the door and bolt whenever someone opened it. He would rarely leave the yard, and always came back in.
As he got older, he wanted to spend more time outside in the summer. (In the winter months, he stayed in nearly all the time.) I think the sun felt good on his old aching bones. He normally would not venture out of his favorite chair on the porch, except maybe to lie on the sidewalk in the sun.
We didn’t get rid of the litter box until we figured out he wasn’t using it anymore. And we’ve had one for the last several years because we got our daughter a kitten, who, incidentally, never goes outside.
I really think it would have been more cruel to keep Tea Cake indoors. He loved being outside and it was almost impossible to keep him in. You should have seen the complicated (and somewhat comical) machinations we had to go through to ensure he didn’t run outside when we were packing up to go out of town for a couple of days…
August 1st, 2007 at 8:01 am
For those who offered advice, thank you. It did help. We are going to have a little ceremony for Tea Cake when John William gets home. I went through our photos and found a lot of Tea Cake — one hilarious one where Tea Cake, (baby) John William and I are all asleep on the bed, all facing the same way, right in a row. I’d post it, but it’s one of those old-fashioned hard copies before digital cameras were around… We have lots of good memories. My daughter and her sweet tutor wrote a little story about Tea Cake and all the things he liked to do, chasing birds and squirrels in the yard, begging for a bite of tuna when I opened a can (I swear he could here the can opener coming out of the drawer…), how he started sprouting gray hair around his face, and how is nose was always wet.
July 27th, 2007 at 11:40 am
I say don’t tell him this weekend if he is going to spend another week or so at camp.
When I was about twelve and away at camp, my parents visited me on the weekend and nonchalantly told me that an uncle had died during the week since I was away. Now death wasn’t something new to me – I had a couple of grand parents pass in the past couple of years so I knew about funerals and such. And its not that I was particularly close to my uncle. But to this day I recall that I had this profound sadness during my last week at camp, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it.
I am certain that this is going to be tough for your son no matter when he is told. Besides the passing of “his” pet, he is going to feel like he “should have been there” and that he let his friend down by going to camp. And he is not going to have you to talk to about his feelings, or worse, he may even be taunted by his fellow campers if he cries in his bunk at night – boys can be like that.
I think the toughest part will be what to say when he asks how Tea Cake is during your visit, as you know he will ask. “Oh, she’s fine” isn’t a very good answer…
Maybe this story will give you some ideas:
A bachelor who lived at home with his mother and pet cat went on a trip to Europe. Before he left he told his best friend to inform him of any emergencies.
A few days after his departure, his cat climbed up on the roof, fell off and died. His friend immediately wired him with the message: “Your cat is dead”
In a few hours he was back home, having cut short his trip in grief and anger at his friend, whom he told “Why didn’t you break the news to me gradually? You know how close I was to my cat! You could have sent a message ‘Your cat climbed up on the roof today’, and the next day you could’ve written, ‘Your cat fell off the roof’ and let me down slowly that he died.”
After a quick memorial service, the bachelor left again to continue his trip. A few days later he returned to his hotel and there was a message waiting for him from his friend. It read, “Your mother climbed up on the roof today.”
I know… bad taste… but I couldn’t resist.