Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

When Animals Grieve: Home-cooking helps

Just like us humans, our animal companions grieve.  On February 20th, Carlotta, our 16.5 year old Havana Brown feline, passed over.  That was tough for me emotionally.  She had been with me through so many professional ups and downs Download Geezerguts. She had to leave just when I was rolling better with the new economy.

But what was tougher was worrying about her soul mate Jason.  Jet black, Jason had been Carlotta's BMF since she nursed a litter of kittens when I was a foster parent for the gang years ago.  They groomed each other several times a day. 

The vet said that if Jason really went into a downward trajectory there was a type of antidepressant.  When I returned home from the vet with the empty cat carrier, Jason took off under the bed.  I slept on the floor, as close as possible to him. 

The next day I went out and bought chicken and beef I could cook for him.  That did the trick.  Now I am still cooking chicken and beef for Jason. 

The amazing thing is that he seems to be adapting to our new life together without Carlotta.  Now he jumps up on the desk next to my laptop and stays there for hours.  When I read on the couch he lays on my stomach.  When I come home from being out, he makes it his business to greet me.

I tell him I miss Carlotta.  He doesn't go there.

Pet Grief: The quiet miracle of sympathy cards via U.S. Postal Service

It's so old-fashioned: snail mail.  But it was exactly the right thing at the right time. 

Almost every day after my 16. 5 year-old Havana Brown baby Carlotta passed over on February 20th, sympathy cards arrived via the U.S. Postal Service.  Some were from readers of this blog who felt the pain of this loss.  Some were from colleagues. 

One was from VCA Animal Hospital, East Haven, Connecticut, where Carlotta was so gently sent into the night.  Each member of the staff wrote a paragraph.  The most touching sentiment was from Dr. Linda Colburn. She observed that I had rescued Carlotta from the streets of Manhattan many years ago.  Then I again came to her rescue when she had cancer so that she was released from her suffering.

When those I care about lose their four-footed companions, I now know to make the effort to shop for the card, dig inside my own memory bank of loss for the message, find a stamp, and then locate a mailbox.  That effort can bring such comfort.

Carlotta Genova (1996-2012) - From the mean streets of Manhattan

This is what normal human beings get drunk over.  But, since my wiring is frayed and I can't safely ingest alcohol, I can't forget for a little while what a sensitive companion Carlotta had been for 16.5 years. 

Our lives came together when I agreed to be a foster mother for her litter.  She was Havana Brown and the four of them were black.  At the time I had moved to Connecticut but was still volunteering at the SPCA in Manhattan.  Someone has found her on the mean streets of Manhattan.  He ribs were showing.  Yet she had been struggling to nurse her little ones.

Back at my condo in Connecticut, Carlotta continued to be a wonderful mother.  She had help there from coal-black Jason who I had already adopted from the Humane Society in Monmouth County, New Jersey.  The two hit it off.  I decided that I had to adopt Carlotta also.  They continued to be helpmates and soulmates over all these years.

Last week I discovered an internal lump on Carlotta's side.  I made an appointment with the vet for later this week.  She was fine.  Then darkness fell quickly.  Yesterday she began hiding and stopped eating.  At the VCA Foxon Animal Hospital, East Haven, Connecticut, Dr. Linda Colburn explained how we can diagnose if the lump was not a tumor - cost-effectively.  I was relieved that I gave Carlotta that one last chance.  No, it wasn't "something else."  We discussed if I wanted to maintain her for a couple more weeks.  I had done that before, in 2004, with 13-year-old cat Sarah with pain patches.  In retrospect I recognized that I was doing it for myself.  And her sick presence upset the rest of the animal family at my house.

Jason is very sad.  He sniffed around the empty cat carrier.  We curled up on the couch together, as we probably will do many days in the next several months.  Attending to his grief lessens my own.  Carlotta taught me how to give of myself.  That's not an easy behavior for a writer to pick up.

On Thursday night I will go to my 12-step meeting and detail how I am getting on the other side of this loss without a drink.

"Anderson" - Must create a new niche in daytime talk

We know who Anderson Cooper is but we are clueless what his show "Anderson" is supposed to be about. 

Without that, there is no compelling reason to tune in, especially since he has so much competition from what's happening on the web and mobile.  No surprise his ratings lag behind hit shows starring Dr. Oz and Ellen DeGeneres.

Since his own life was shaped by the loss of his brother - we can see the woundedness in Cooper - why not create a new dark niche on daytime about the kinds of things, people, and illusions we lose, how we heal, and what's next.  Ideal guests would be Joan Didion, author of "Blue Nights," and Madonna Badger, the Calvin Cline ad expert who lost her three children and parents in a Christmas fire in Stamford, Connecticut. 

I would welcome going on "Anderson" and talking about how I have learned to walk through pet grief.  I will likely be facing it yet again with my 16-year-old Havana Brown animal companion Carlotta.  We have a 3:30 P.M. vet appointment today.  Either she will be leaving with a pain patch or passing over to join her buddies Molly Mittens, Nicole, Callie, Point Pleasant, Sarah, and Rebecca.  There isn't a day which goes by when I don't recall the love we shared in the recent scary recession and the earlier times of great material abundance.

Pet Grief: The tragedy that we usually outlive our pets

Life is suffering, so goes Buddhist philosophy which provides the tools to navigate pain - productively.  Well, I will really be hitting my Buddhist readings in the next several months. 

On Tuesday I have an appointment with the vet.  My 16-year-old Havana Brown feline Carlotta has an internal growth on her side.  No, she isn't hiding, not yet.  She is still eating. But she isn't engaging as much with her 16-year-old coal black feline buddy Jason. 

A reasonable person would conclude that I am going to lose Carlotta.  So will Jason, which concerns me more than my own grief.  

The reality of having animal companions is that they tend to die before we do.  It's the unusual situation when they, like Leona Helmsley's dog Trouble, outlive us.  Since this happens again and again, maybe we can learn to cope better.  I don't know.  My dog Molly Mittens passed over five and a half years ago.  I can still become very sad when I recall the great car trips we had had together.

Madonna Badger, Joan Didion: Face of suffering

They say a child learns about the world from the mother's face.  If that face is serene, the child will come to expect the world to be a calm, predictable place.  If the face is anxious, then all bets are off if the child will even attempt to navigate that hostile setting. 

Now we can add something to that truism: we can read the love the mother had and likely still has for her child from her face after the death of that child.  And we're reading such suffering in the face of Madonna Badger, whose three daughters died in a Christmas fire, and Joan Didion, whose daughter died from, it seems, a confluence of factors. 

Didion records her pain in her book "Blue Nights."  When she gets on the other side of shock and despair, we hope that Badger renders a portrait of the experience in a documentary. 

My loss of the little ones I have so loved - my dogs and cats - has been recorded in my opinion-editorials on pet grief for THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.   Believe me, that has helped.  Yet there isn't a day that goes by since 1982 that I don't have flashbacks of how it was together.  In my life are two 16-year-old felines.  When they pass on, I will probably pack up and move to Spain.  For me, the memory bank is nation-bound.  Spain is another country.

Losing Our Four-Legged Companions: Do we get better at handling it or do you just know how out of control pet grief can get

Jason, like Sarah, Callie and Point Pleasant, is dying of cancer.  It won't happen right away.  But this time, or so I am telling myself and you, I am not going to fall apart. 

After all, I am lucky that Jason has made it to age 16.  He also had the benefit of the companionship of Carlotta, a 16-year-old Havana Brown cat deserted on the streets of Manhattan, pregnant.  Jason helped her with her litter until they were weaned.  Then I brought them back to the Manhattan SPCA for adoption.  Carlotta, freed of her responsibilities, doted on Jason.  Eventually, Mr. Man returned some of the attention. 

Also, Jason has had me all to himself.  The dogs Nicole, Joshua, and Molly Mittens, who demanded so much attention, have passed on.  He now jumps on my stomach the way they did.  That's the life, at least for a cat which tends to always play second fiddle to dogs.

No, it's no consolation that Carlotta will still be family when Jason passes over.  Her grief will be profound and I will have to console her.  They have been together 15 years. 

What seems to be centering me is that my most important accomplishment in life was bringing into my life cats no one wanted.  Over the years there were nine of them.  I saw that through, well almost.  My fear was that I would croak before they would.  After that their lives would be very difficult.  I prefer for mine to  be made difficult through loss than they suffer.  They had had enough of that before I adopted them.

Terry Thompson: Some suicides should have gotten the death penalty

Terry Thompson killed himself and, indirectly, took more than 50 exotic animals with him.  For animal lovers, that is a crime meriting the death penalty.  Since Thompson is already dead, that ritual of social censure should be performed symbolically.  There can be a memorial for all those innocents who had lost their lives.

Suicide is one of the most narcissistic acts in the history of mankind.  At the very least, those who off themselves leave survivors with a legacy of confusion and guilt.  More often, they are also snuffing out other lives, animal and human. 

When an attempted suicide arrives in the emergency ward, the powers-that-be should give them the low-down on how what they are doing hurts the social fabric.  Sympathy?  Forget it.  We who keep on trucking in this brutal economy are the ones who deserve the little pat on the back. 

Valley of Tears: Vet Waiting Room

Today I did a good deed.  I offered to accompany a neighbor who decided it was time that her two aged cats passed over.  One cat Pumpkin obviously had cancer.  The other cat Lucy had something too.  Both were about 21.

With Pumpkin and Lucy meowing in the back seat, I drove the 12 minutes from New Haven, Connecticut to the vet hospital in West Haven.  I fully regretted agreeing to this good deed.  Only an animal lover would understand how soul-wrenching this was, even though the cats, who I had played with for five years, were not mine.

The waiting room was full of other sad stories.  When my neighbor explained hers to the vet both of us burst into tears.  It was about 3:40 P.M.  By 4:05 P.M. they had passed over.  Two men were waiting for the vet to do the same for their very depleted cocker spaniel.  I thought one would faint.  Another man waiting for his dog to be discharged from the hospital recounted how he and his wife finally got up the courage to put to sleep their other dog.

My two cats Jason and Carlotta are 16.  If our luck holds out the three of us won't be making that trip for about five years.  Every day I still have moments of sadness for the loss of Molly Mittens who died on the vet's table of cogestive heart failure five years and three months ago.

 

Emotional Intelligence: Learning from animals

When was the last time we stretched our budget to buy gourmet cookies for a neighbor or even a friend?  Not in this economy.  Yet, every day we do just that for our pets, especially our dogs.  THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that we're now spending $55 billion a year annually [Source: Packaged Facts] on treats as well as basics for those animal companions in our lives.

Those of us who have studied emotional intelligence [Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg] see lessons to be learned from animal intelligence.  After all, Fido and Muffy have influence over us that most of the humans in our life and even our work don't.  With the exception of animals who have been abused or conditioned to be hostile, the lion's share of that impact enhances our lives.  That's exactly why we allow pets to dominate the house, take them everywhere in the car, and are thrown into primitive mourning states when they die.

Recent research on how we humans survive and thrive on planet earth confirms how tethered we are to what's in our environment.  Mark Matousek, in his new book "Ethical Wisdom: What Makes Us Good" observes:

"In contact with loved ones, our bodies secrete oxytocin and endorphins, while chronically distressing relationships reverse that process, suppressing the immune system and raising stress hormones."

We all know that phenomenon.  Upset by the boss, client or customer, we burst into our front door, there is the dog, and that turns the switch from feeling overwhelmed and confused to feeling in-charge and whole. 

Eventually, we might connect the dots and find a better cut of boss, client or customer.  In their breakthrough book "Angel Customers, Demon Customers," Larry Selden and Geoffrey Colvin deconstruct how much the wrong kinds of business can harm us.  Smart enterprises no longer seek to max revenues.  Instead they found it's a best practice to find the best clients and customers for their category or niche.  

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Scientific research is confirming what might be called The Goldilocks Factor in business and personal life.  We have to search for the right fit of the environment for how we human beings are hard-wired.

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Animal intelligence is focused on the now.  Therefore, its memory bank doesn't allow safe storage of resentments.  Every day is a new day.  Fido might do a dump next to my bed if I am late to walk him.  But that's all forgotten once I fulfill my part of the social contract.  Wouldn't those professionals we need in our business be more receptive to us if they sensed we were not carting around decades of grievances?

I haven't met an animal yet who doesn't accept the world as it is.  There's accommodation, not complaint.  Instead of railing against the lousy economy which seems to be slowing again, why not just embrace the new normal and roll with it?  We may be earning less for a writing assignment but at least we're earning.  A bone in the bowl is better than the bone we assume is due us.

And, third, part of animal intelligence is the hunger for physical contact.  My two cats Jason and Carlotta are not interested in having a Facebook page.  They want me in the flesh.  Marketers are just recognizing this need for man the social animal to "meet up" with other human beings.  Online is expanding to have a presence offline.  Social events experts are busy again.

A few months ago I experienced that internal paradigm shift in which I integrated what I observed to be effective in business relationships and let go what had generated success in the 20th century.  New assignments came in effortlessly.  My hunch is that I took to heart what my animal companions since 1978 have been trying to show me about managing reality in a context in which all the players make out just fine.

Disclosure:  After writing about Matousek's "Ethical Wisdom" as a happy consumer of enlightenment for weeks, I have been hired by the author to help with the publicity.  What an honor. [Here's an excerpt from "Ethical Wisdom" Download PagesfromMato_9780385527897_5p_all_r1-1]