When I was 24, I flew from Brooklyn to the small North Carolina town I grew up in because of my cat, Simon. He was a deaf Turkish Angora that I'd had since I was eight years old, and he wasn't doing so hot. As a child, he'd slept in my bed every single night, and his white fur was a constant presence on our floors, no matter how much we vacuumed. He'd been on heart medication for years, which my mom had diligently administered to him every single night, first by forcing pills down his throat and then by injecting the medication straight into his body.
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By the time I saw him, the poor little guy could barely walk. My mom told me that he was going to have to get put down soon, and carried him over to me to let me hold him for what would turn out to be the last time. As I cradled him in my arms, a flash of energy went through him, one that I could feel as he jumped out of my clutches and sprinted into our dining room. We heard a wail, then a thud—or maybe it was a thud, then a wail. Either way, when we entered the dining room, Simon was dead.Ever since Simon died, I've had an unshakeable fascination with hearing people's stories of their childhood pets dying. As an adult, the death of a childhood pet is a rite of passage, a tangible reminder that our connections to adolescence grow more tenuous with each passing year. But unlike moving out of your parents' place or declaring financial independence, death can occur at any time, abruptly so.For children, the death of a pet is often our first experience with death itself, a harsh rejoinder to the innocence and sense of immortality that pervades youth.Recently, I spoke with people from all walks of life, collecting their tales of deceased pets. Their stories are colored with grief and flashes of black comedy, and they've come to be defining moments in their lives. As one person put it after he told me about how he accidentally starved his pet hamster to death, "I'm not sure whether this is darkly funny, or just dark."
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JAKE—PUG CAUGHT HIM LOOKING AT PORN, THEN DIED
Alyson—Kept Killing and Replacing Her Little Brother's Betta Fish
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Charlie—Dog Suffocated in Trash Bag
Mary—Accidentally Cooked Her Bird
Will—The Prius of Doom
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Haley—Discovered Cat's Lifeless Body in Attic
Katherine—Dog Committed Suicide
Andrew—Dead Dog Was Inadvertently Cryogenically Frozen
Diane—A Classic Tale of Cat vs. Mouse
Erin—Dad Put Her Cat Down By Hitting It Over the Head with a Shovel
James—Fed the Wrong Rodent
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Katelyn—Pet Raccoon Used as Dog Bait
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In the side yard, my dad was standing in a sea of howling dogs, looking up into a tree with his arms crossed. As I got closer, I noticed a bloody rope hanging from the tree. I asked my dad what the dogs were barking at, and he told me, "Your little friend served his purpose today." The dogs were fighting over my raccoon's lifeless body.Growing up in Australia, our neighbors were country people, and they had this fox fur in their living room that they'd skinned themselves. I loved it when I was a little girl—when we went over to their house, I'd set it in my lap and pet it. I always asked my parents if we could skin our cat whenever he died, because I always thought it was the coolest thing. They said "sure," not really thinking about it. Fast-forward seven or eight years, when my poor cat got hit by a car. My parents brought her dead body over to me, and I asked if we could get him to our neighbor and have him skinned.Improbably, my parents made good on their word and called our neighbor, who even more improbably said he'd do it. He skinned the cat, and we put its skin and fur in a freezer in our lounge room. From time to time, I'd go up there and rub the bag, just to know my cat was there. To finish the job, you have to get leather put on the other side of its fur, but there weren't any people in our town who could do it. A few months later, my dad happened to have a business trip in a town where someone performed that specific service. So he took our cat in a cooler on an airplane to drop it off at a leather tanning place, and a few months later, he arrived back with the skinned animal.He was beautiful—even his whiskers were still there! He didn't have any eyes, so when we'd have friends over we'd put marbles in his eyes and pretend he was still alive, or I'd run around with him draped over my head like I was an Ewok. I had him displayed over the couch in our lounge, and my sister would always ask me to put it away because she thought it was weird. He's still around, but now I live in a different country and my husband is definitely not interested in having a dead cat in our house.Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.