"No more I hear thee purr and purr as in the frolic days that were"
January 24, 2016 4:09 AM   Subscribe

Cat Funerals in the Victorian Era: "During the early 19th century, it was not uncommon for the mortal remains of a beloved pet cat to be buried in the family garden. By the Victorian era, however, the formality of cat funerals had increased substantially. Bereaved pet owners commissioned undertakers to build elaborate cat caskets. Clergymen performed cat burial services. And stone masons chiseled cat names on cat headstones." Ends with a lovely elegy for Peter, aged 12, by poet Clinton Scollard. posted by fraula (8 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
My cat is dead.
He's not sick or old or dying
He's dead.
And there's no time for one last silent moment,
For a last all-encompassing purr,
For a last stroke on soft cat fur,
There's only frozen reality
And tears burning slushily down my face
And my stomach like a clenched fist
And a voice, myself, saying
Shh, now, this is it,
This is real, so don't fight it
So I don't fight - I cry
Broken into softly falling lumps
That will reassemble tomorrow
A little different.


Alison Van Egeren, 13
Glenview, Illinois

-via The Next Whole Earth Catalog 1980
posted by fairmettle at 4:42 AM on January 24, 2016 [18 favorites]


Aw, jeez, now I'm crying and I can't even finish reading the article.

I lost my little old man cat Pookie a few years ago, and I wish I could have given him a funeral. I'd had him for 16 years, and if any cat deserved a funeral it was him.
posted by dipping_sauce at 5:53 AM on January 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Victorians did have form in being obsessed with matters funerary in general. In fact, I've wondered whether the Victorian fad for ancient Egypt was not, at least in part, because that civilisation was known to them largely through its funeral practices. And the Egyptians also ceremonially buried cats...
posted by acb at 6:00 AM on January 24, 2016


50£ for a one hour visit of the Hyde Park pet cemetery?!
posted by jillithd at 6:11 AM on January 24, 2016


Maybe it's just me but first article's choice of illustrations put me off a bit. The child mortality rate was pretty high at the time and the juxtaposition of those images with the text is kind of needlessly "lolvictorians".

I like the raised lettering on the concrete grave stones in the Hyde park link. I guess the maker would have had a form with a clay bottom that he could press the type blocks into? Very nice, neat work.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:00 AM on January 24, 2016


There isn't space enough in the world today for all beloved pets to get their due in lovely cemeteries, I guess; and it seems to me that pet funerals are taking place on Facebook these days.

The people who bought our old house are going to be surprised if they ever decide to change the front garden. Under the burning bush there's Homey's beautiful old converted silver chest casket, with a brass plaque on the outside and what's now a 10 year old cat carcass inside. Homey came with the house when we bought it, that thirteen year-old toothless and three-legged old meanie, and he should stay in his home always. We had a lovely ceremony with the neighbours, who mourned not only the poor old coot, but thanked us for the years of caring for him when their neighbour who'd lived in that house her whole life, had to move without him.

And hopefully, the remains of five to ten fish, three mice, one hamster, one frog and one snake burials in the back yard, done so the animals could become one with the earth, with ceremonies for all, go rather unnoticed.
posted by peagood at 8:54 AM on January 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


There isn't space enough in the world today for all beloved pets to get their due in lovely cemeteries, I guess; and it seems to me that pet funerals are taking place on Facebook these days.

And where pets go now, humans will go later.

A few eccentric rich people will still be buried in graves, or neoclassical marble tombs or what have you (though, in this philosophically materialistic age, probably fewer than in Victorian times; after all, one who doesn't believe in final judgments and such might be more likely to leave their leftover money to some form of posterity not involving their corpse), but the rest of us will be uploaded to the cloud, in the form of some kind of memorial page. Perhaps instead of quasi-perpetual land title on graves, there will be some kind of perpetual hosting arrangement (whose fine print says that it expires at some point when, presumably, everybody who remembered the departed has themselves entered the cloud).
posted by acb at 11:59 AM on January 24, 2016


For best cat poem, that doesn't beat pangur bán
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:07 PM on January 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


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