Taking Down the Cemetery

My in-laws are downsizing and moving to a one-story house closer in, as retirees tend to do, so I am losing my pet cemetery in the heavily wooded part of their lot in a neighboring county.

It was a great cemetery, accessible by a makeshift path and overlooking a very deep creek bed below. When we arrived with our first cat to bury, Merly, there were already two others on the bluff, my sister-in-law's cat, Elvis, and my other sister-in-law's dog Beagle Bailey. We sort of knew about Bailey, but Elvis was only discovered because we hit a towel after digging into the perfect spot and my husband became suspicious the grave was already occupied.

It was a very hot July day. My in-laws were at the beach so we were alone at the house and this was our first shared pet to die on us, and we were distraught. Somehow, my husband's eyeglasses fell out of his breast pocket into the grave and he didn't notice they were gone until he was done refilling Elvis' grave. So he had to dig the hole again.

We found the second best spot and left Merly there with many tears, arriving back home with many ticks on us. Over the seasons, we'd add a ceramic marker with her name and more big rocks. Then we added another cat, Red, also in July. This time my husband was leaving to play a show in West Virginia the morning she died, so I had to go to the cemetery alone and get my stepfather-in-law to dig the grave.

This past February, we made our first winter outing to the cemetery to bury Arbee, and this time when we came back weeks later with the ceramic marker, we added more rocks purchased from a quarry to all the graves and colorful pinwheels that spun in the breeze and communicated comfort to the matching pinwheels in my yard at home.

But I don't want to leave all that to strangers who will be buying the house. It is time to part. It is not unbearable. My first cat of 18 years, is buried in the yard of my husband's childhood home, which has since been sold and is no longer accessible to us. Her companion, who lived to 17, was buried in my in-law's first house, which they sold. That time they exhumed all the dogs in their yard for cremation, and my cat was in the crowd. Her ashes reside in a little doghouse on their mantle. I really don't think about her being there or anywhere. And after 20 years, it's hard to remember those two at all.

They are gone. I have too many still here to worry about: Neelix, the oldest and living with nasal cancer for almost two years now, frail as a stick; Chatter, overweight and tail-less, and still into everyone's business, the supervisor of all the other cats; Kira, the little cross-eyed mother, as lovable as a doll; her two, huge, Maine Coon-like lazy sons, Sulu and Seven; the stray cat Mackie who stared in our window for years before finally being persuaded to move in; BeeGee, the sleek black female who hates all the other cats and either has to be closed in her own room or outside. She still waits for her original owners to come back. They left her behind several years ago to roam the block and figure things out for herself. Then there's the two who just came since August, Jordan, the happy little stray with the tipped ear who still had testicles anyway, one inside and one outside, and his tiny, devoted companion Odo, who traveled five blocks through the neighborhood to find out where her friend had gone, and somehow found him. She is so skittish, it was a miracle I was finally able to sneak up behind her while Chatter was distracting her and scruff her and get her into the house. We see her playing across the room, but we still can't approach her. I hope we got her before she went into heat.