My kitten was soft and gentle and I loved the purring noise she made as she sat on my lap and the way her tongue almost tickled my hand when she licked me. I was about ten-years-old and our barn cat had given birth to a few kittens. Unfortunately the whole litter contracted a disease that left them with open sores and they had to be euthanized. I mourned the loss of that first pet.

A few years later I listened in wonder to the melodious singing of the bright yellow canary gifted to me for my twelfth birthday. I also felt sad that my pet was caged instead of allowed to fly free. When I voiced my misgivings, my mom assured me that he was bred to be a pet and couldn’t survive in the wild. I fed and watered him daily, and changed the newspapers lining his cage every Saturday. But when we moved his cage from downstairs to my upstairs bedroom, the bird was no longer in my mom’s view and she naturally stopped reminding me to feed and water him. I came home from school one day and my pet lay dead in his cage; empty food and water receptacles undeniable evidence that I’d killed him. How could I cry when it was my fault?

The next animal I claimed as my own was the runt in a litter of AKC registered German Shepherd puppies. He was nicknamed “Stupid” because he wasn’t right in the head and wasn’t fit to be sold. In retrospect my attraction to this poor creature makes sense because of Mr. Lee who was interested in buying one of the dogs as a pet for his family. Mr. Lee was also my algebra teacher (an immigrant from Japan) and had called me into the hallway after my first algebra test, where he shook his finger in my face and scolded “your brother, your sister so smart, why you so stupid?” He picked out a smart, healthy puppy for his family, but I wasn’t allowed to keep the defective pup.

After that I lost interest in pets, until in our early months of marriage, Doug brought home a beautiful black lab puppy. I’d always liked the name Sarah but knew I could never name a daughter Sarah because Doug had once had a girlfriend with that name, so I named the puppy Sarah. While she was still less than 6 months old, unbeknownst to me she was sleeping behind the tire of our pickup truck when I backed out of the driveway. Sarah didn’t survive.

When Jonathan was a baby, we bought some little finches. We made sure they had plenty of food and water when we left for a trip one Christmas, but we were unaware that our propane tank was nearly out of fuel and our trailer home got so cold that the tiny birds froze while we were away.

Later, at our home in Cornville we decided to raise a milk goat named Matilda. Soon after acquiring a Billy Goat Matilda gave birth to triplets. They grew fast, ate everything in sight, and repeatedly escaped from their pen. One day while Doug was at work, laborers from a nearby construction site knocked on my door, three little goats in tow, complaining that they were a nuisance on the job site. I tied them each to a different fence post to keep them from getting tangled up with each other. I didn’t know they’d pull the chains on their necks so tight they would strangle themselves. When Doug arrived he found their lifeless bodies and buried them, planting a fruit tree over each one.

Although my history with pets was awful, I allowed all kinds of animals to live in our home. Mostly at the insistence of Evan, we welcomed hamsters, snakes, an iguana, a tarantula, turtles, poison dart frogs, dogs, cats, various fish, and even chinchillas. We also raised a pig to slaughter and kept chickens for their eggs. I wasn’t attracted to any of them, but tolerated them for the sake of our children.

For every animal of the forest is mine,

beasts by the thousands on my mountains.

I know every bird in the heights; whatever moves in the wild is mine.

Psalm 50:10&11

Until recently, starting with a comment about knowing for sure that St. Francis wouldn’t want to be my friend, I’d joke about my history with pets in a way that made people laugh. However, a few months ago I began to wonder if the deaths of my pets had interfered with my ability to appreciate animals in the way I saw other people do. When I began recounting the demise of my pets, to a friend of mine, instead of laughing, she looked concerned and then started to cry. “It’s not funny.” she said. “Lani, I know your tender heart! You’re using humor to cope. You’ve never grieved those losses!”

Her honest response moved me deeply and I cried too. All at once I remembered how I felt when my beloved little canary died. I’d been angry at myself and had no place to take my guilt and sadness. I finally allowed myself to grieve and found within myself kindness and compassion for the little girl who forgot to feed and water her beloved bird. It wasn’t until then that I remembered I’d named him Sunny for his bright yellow feathers.

Over the next few days I grieved the deaths of the other pets as they came to mind. While they were “only animals”, their lives had mattered to me.