Christmas 2022
We put down Duncan yesterday.
Seventeen years old, he caught four mice within the last week of his life, but what we suspect was stomach cancer left him unable to digest anything and perpetually hungry.
I often told friends, “We have two cats, one that I love, and Duncan. I’ll be sad when Duncan goes, but I’ll weep when Daisy dies.” (Daisy is eighteen and still full of exploratory vigor.)
But I cried yesterday.
Cried when my kids said goodbye. Cried when I tried to explain the meaning behind all the notes my daughter decorated on the burial case to the vet. Cried while driving up to my parents’ home to bury him next to Tiger, Sparky, and Noel.
Seventeen years old, he caught four mice within the last week of his life, but what we suspect was stomach cancer left him unable to digest anything and perpetually hungry.
I often told friends, “We have two cats, one that I love, and Duncan. I’ll be sad when Duncan goes, but I’ll weep when Daisy dies.” (Daisy is eighteen and still full of exploratory vigor.)
But I cried yesterday.
Cried when my kids said goodbye. Cried when I tried to explain the meaning behind all the notes my daughter decorated on the burial case to the vet. Cried while driving up to my parents’ home to bury him next to Tiger, Sparky, and Noel.
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Duncan was a jerk.
We adopted him from the animal shelter in Castaic, CA a year after Daisy. Where Daisy was unaffectionate and aloof, Duncan loved being pet. But he was also extraordinarily anxious. His need for attention was slightly stronger than his fear of plastic bags crinkling, sneezes, and light gusts of air, though, so he fearfully sought attention wherever he could find it. If he was snuggling on our laps and heard the faucet turn on three rooms away he would leap from our laps as if a greyhound race just burst into the room. And he wouldn’t jump off with care for our wellbeing. Every claw unsheathed, digging deeply into our tender lap-flesh, to give him the greatest possible momentum to escape the greyhound nightmare. . . or the faucet from three rooms over.
I still bear the scars.
But the jerkwad train doesn’t end there.
Daisy was a year older than him, and when we introduced them, she tried to mother him through cleaning and playing, but he always returned her affection with cheap shots and aggression. And even though Daisy has always been physically larger than him, Duncan would bully her from her bed, or food bowl. Most often Daisy would just let him have whatever he wanted – although she did remind him from time-to-time that she could trounce him in a wrestling match.
Duncan was also vindictive. Years ago, when we lived in Michigan, a good friend came to visit us. We installed a cat door so the kitties could make their way to the litterbox unimpeded. Duncan didn’t like this, and surmised my friend was the reason for the new door, so he pooped on his bed. These kinds of pettiness marked the cat.
The worst offense of Duncan was what he did in the middle of the night when my kids were little. If he didn’t receive the affection or attention he wanted, he would go outside the baby’s room and caterwaul at the top of his lungs to wake them, and us, up. I read once that the brains of sleep deprived parents are similar to the brains of people undergoing torture. Duncan didn’t care.
We adopted him from the animal shelter in Castaic, CA a year after Daisy. Where Daisy was unaffectionate and aloof, Duncan loved being pet. But he was also extraordinarily anxious. His need for attention was slightly stronger than his fear of plastic bags crinkling, sneezes, and light gusts of air, though, so he fearfully sought attention wherever he could find it. If he was snuggling on our laps and heard the faucet turn on three rooms away he would leap from our laps as if a greyhound race just burst into the room. And he wouldn’t jump off with care for our wellbeing. Every claw unsheathed, digging deeply into our tender lap-flesh, to give him the greatest possible momentum to escape the greyhound nightmare. . . or the faucet from three rooms over.
I still bear the scars.
But the jerkwad train doesn’t end there.
Daisy was a year older than him, and when we introduced them, she tried to mother him through cleaning and playing, but he always returned her affection with cheap shots and aggression. And even though Daisy has always been physically larger than him, Duncan would bully her from her bed, or food bowl. Most often Daisy would just let him have whatever he wanted – although she did remind him from time-to-time that she could trounce him in a wrestling match.
Duncan was also vindictive. Years ago, when we lived in Michigan, a good friend came to visit us. We installed a cat door so the kitties could make their way to the litterbox unimpeded. Duncan didn’t like this, and surmised my friend was the reason for the new door, so he pooped on his bed. These kinds of pettiness marked the cat.
The worst offense of Duncan was what he did in the middle of the night when my kids were little. If he didn’t receive the affection or attention he wanted, he would go outside the baby’s room and caterwaul at the top of his lungs to wake them, and us, up. I read once that the brains of sleep deprived parents are similar to the brains of people undergoing torture. Duncan didn’t care.
 Drinking Water Like a Normal Cat, 2013 |  Watching Birds in SoCal, 2011 |
So why did I cry when we put Duncan down?
Two reasons.
The first is about my own spiritual journey. My wife Kristin can attest there were multiple times I wanted to get rid of Duncan or make him a permanent outdoor cat. Around this time voice assistants like Alexa and Siri were becoming popular. I read an article about how people would rage and scream at the assistants. I came to the conclusion this behavior wasn’t helpful because while it doesn’t affect the robot, it trains our souls to embrace rage. While my frustrations with Duncan never became screaming rage fits, I didn’t like him and was convicted by the Holy Spirit this wasn’t only unhealthy for him, but it was shaping my soul to dislike anyone who annoyed me. I began making concerted efforts to love him. Especially when he annoyed me. (Without reinforcing negative behavior.) And my affection for him grew. And I saw over the years that my ability to love him and very troublesome people also grew.
Second. Duncan loved my kids. I already mentioned that he was a nervous cat, so he was rightly terrified of the kids when they were young. We monitored their interactions, but toddlers and preschoolers are rough and tumble. Daisy wanted nothing to do with the kids. (Which, despite my daughter’s best efforts, largely continues to this day). Duncan’s need for affection slightly outweighed his terror, though. Duncan was often an emotional support cat to my kids.
He loved them.
They loved him.
And I loved him for it.
In his final days Duncan caught four mice. One of them he brought to me in bed – booping my nose with it to show me what he brought for me. The cat knew his time was up. I imagine he was concerned for me and wanted to make sure I had something to eat after he was gone. Which was ironic because he begged for food at the table like a dog. Even as I write this at the dinner table his absence is felt. I couldn’t sit at the table without his incessant demand for food.
Two reasons.
The first is about my own spiritual journey. My wife Kristin can attest there were multiple times I wanted to get rid of Duncan or make him a permanent outdoor cat. Around this time voice assistants like Alexa and Siri were becoming popular. I read an article about how people would rage and scream at the assistants. I came to the conclusion this behavior wasn’t helpful because while it doesn’t affect the robot, it trains our souls to embrace rage. While my frustrations with Duncan never became screaming rage fits, I didn’t like him and was convicted by the Holy Spirit this wasn’t only unhealthy for him, but it was shaping my soul to dislike anyone who annoyed me. I began making concerted efforts to love him. Especially when he annoyed me. (Without reinforcing negative behavior.) And my affection for him grew. And I saw over the years that my ability to love him and very troublesome people also grew.
Second. Duncan loved my kids. I already mentioned that he was a nervous cat, so he was rightly terrified of the kids when they were young. We monitored their interactions, but toddlers and preschoolers are rough and tumble. Daisy wanted nothing to do with the kids. (Which, despite my daughter’s best efforts, largely continues to this day). Duncan’s need for affection slightly outweighed his terror, though. Duncan was often an emotional support cat to my kids.
He loved them.
They loved him.
And I loved him for it.
In his final days Duncan caught four mice. One of them he brought to me in bed – booping my nose with it to show me what he brought for me. The cat knew his time was up. I imagine he was concerned for me and wanted to make sure I had something to eat after he was gone. Which was ironic because he begged for food at the table like a dog. Even as I write this at the dinner table his absence is felt. I couldn’t sit at the table without his incessant demand for food.
 Sleeping on Me, 2010 |  Sleeping on Me, 2011 |
I saw scholar and author Karen Swallow Prior lost a beloved pet recently as well. When I grew up in the church, the question of pet’s eternal destination was an emphatic no. I’ve soften that stance over the years, after all Jesus is making the New Heaven and New Earth which is populated with animals – why not remake our beloved pets? And if all creation awaits for the messiah – why not renew the animals?
In her recent article, Prior refers to her article from Christianity Today on this topic which I found helpful.
In her recent article, Prior refers to her article from Christianity Today on this topic which I found helpful.
When I was young and gnostic, I was certain that pets do not go to heaven. I didn’t know I was gnostic, of course. I simply thought that life on earth was about bicycles and ice cream and books and not saying certain words or smoking behind the barn with my cousins.
Heaven was about being with God and angels singing and seeing great-grandma again and not being in hell.
You only got to heaven if you were saved, and I hadn’t seen any animals go to church, let alone go forward during an altar call. In the old days, I was told, a nearby farmer used to ride his horse to church, where he’d hitch her up to the iron rail that still stood outside the one-room country church in Maine where my family worshiped. I never imagined a horse coming inside to get saved.
Yet the Bible teaches that God does save animals. For example, God brought Noah two of each kind of living creature in order to save them from the Flood. God chastised reluctant Jonah about the need to save not only the human inhabitants of Nineveh, but also its many animals. Such salvation is not, of course, quite the kind invited by the altar call. Even so, it should not be overlooked.
God not only saves animals. At times, his covenants include them. God’s covenant with Noah included “every living thing of all flesh” (Gen. 6:18-19, KJV). In Hosea, God proclaimed a covenant “with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground” (2:18, NIV).
When God made a covenant with one of his chosen ones, he often marked it by assigning them a particular name: Abraham, Sarah, Israel, Jesus, Paul. God told Adam to name the animals and, in so doing, Adam reflected God’s acts of naming. When we choose to take into our household creatures that share with us the breath of life and bestow them with names, perhaps we enter into a kind of covenantal relationship with them too. To echo C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, perhaps when we name animals, they “become themselves” and our salvation “flows over into them.”
I have put away my childish thinking about heaven. Scripture describes eternity not as an ethereal cloud-top existence, but as both spiritual and material, just as our life is now. It is a new heaven and a new earth (2 Pet. 3:13) where “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). As foretold in Isaiah, animals will be there. “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat … and a little child will lead them” (11:6). Perhaps God will honor my acts of naming the animals by bringing Gracie, Kasey, Myrtle, Peter, Oscar, and so many more there, too.
Dr. Prior is a gift to us all.
Duncan was a tri-coastal cat, living on the Westcoast, Great Lakes Coast, and the East Coast.
Goodbye Duncan. You taught me how to grow my love. You loved my children well. You are missed.
Duncan was a tri-coastal cat, living on the Westcoast, Great Lakes Coast, and the East Coast.
Goodbye Duncan. You taught me how to grow my love. You loved my children well. You are missed.
 Old Man Duncan After Catching a Mouse, 2026 |  Duncan, 2009 - 2026 |
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