In death as in life, it turns out, you get what you pay for
Despite all my questions about the environmental footprint of cremation as opposed to plain old tree-of-life burial in the back yard, when it came to my cat Worf, I sought cremation closure. His parting carbon pawprint would surely be quite small, as these things go – defensible, surely, for grief-stricken me? And, with both burly sons away at school, I wasn’t up to the physical or emotional task of digging a grave beneath the azaleas for his little black and white furry self, his body grown scrawny and his fur coarse in the last few weeks of his life.
So, although he died at home, I carried his corpse in a blanket back to the veterinarian who had been unable to prevent his death. What was probably less than five minutes felt like several hours as I sat there in the waiting room, cradling a dead – and by then very stiff — pet on my lap, while everyone else awaited their turn with the animal healers.
Come back tomorrow for his remains, the receptionist cooed. My cat Worf had been one of her favorites, perhaps because we’d named him for a Star Trek character.
The next afternoon, I duly received a plaster cast of Worf’s paw, together with a blue velvet bag with a gold-embroidered promise that “We’ll meet at the river.” Inside the velvet sack was a plastic one, holding a little mound of pebble-sized fragments – our dear one’s “cremains.” I confess I felt soothed, clutching my blue velvet, and ready to move on.
To be given the cremated remains of your loved one – man or beast – is said to offer “closure,” that somehow comforting opportunity to admit to yourself that so-and-so is well-and-truly gone. I suppose that’s because you’re holding the last remaining ounces of him or her.
Presuming it really is your own special him or her. A quick Google expedition in search of pet cremation lawsuits results in a dismaying – [and entertaining if you’re the schadenfreude type] –catalogue of owners seeking redress for not having received remains, getting the wrong ones, or for discovering their animal had been comingled in its most final moments with others far less special. (My personal favorite is “Pet Lawsuit Rises from the Ashes,” but that’s another story.)
Certainly in that moment, it never occurred to me that the remains of my little space warrior might be mixed in with something named for a Romulan, or worse.
But how would I have known for sure? Despite their best efforts to clean up the retorts between terminal bakings, even the best human crematorium occasionally serves up a tiny crumb of the day’s deceased #2 along with those of deceased #1. Well, really, does it matter if a bit of my Uncle Joe is mixed in with your Aunt Sarah? And anyway, who’s to know? Would you be able to identify distinguish your mom’s crumbs from mine? Apparently it does. People do like to be certain exactly who’s in their crematory container, whether man or little beast.
When it comes to man’s-best-pets, however, you get what you pay for. Standard crematory practice, unless the pet owner stipulates otherwise, is to get the maximum from each firing of the oven. Your animal may go out in a gang bang or in solitary, or refinements in between. The following rundown of options from the Loyal Companion Pet Cremation [www.LoyalCompanionPetCremation.com] is representative – although Loyal Pet is distinctive for its “well appointed room for family members to say a final goodbye”:
In Communal cremation your pet is baked along with other fellow departed, and you do not receive a distinct bundle of his or her leftovers.
In an individual cremation, the pet is placed at the front of the oven, and is moved towards the rear of the oven as other animals are placed inside. Owners are given cremains of their pets, although the company concedes that “comingling of remains is probable.”
A Partitioned baking, on the other hand, means that while your animal is joined with others in the chamber, it is in a partition of its very own – and you do received a bundle afterward, which the company assures, contains no “comingled” specs from other partitions.
The gold standard of pet cremation is private, in which your animal remains all by its lonesome, after which you receive the collected ashes, “guaranteed” by the crematory as those of your pet alone.
Like any other human commercial endeavor however, the evidence on companion farewells suggests the bereaved be wary. Loyal Pet Cremation is not the only outfit in the business, and while its options are typical, its terminology is not necessarily identical to that used elsewhere. Its individual cremation is what other crematories call partitioned, for instance, and what Loyal labels as private – that is with your pet truly by itself in the oven – and as a practical matter, is sometimes unobtainable elsewhere. At Pet Angel World Services, however, there is guaranteed sequestered pet cremation. At PetAngel, [www.petangelworldservices.com] a “best in class” company formed to serve the “unmet needs” of the “pet family,” the grieving owner can also access a variety of help, among them grief counseling and links to consumer protection information – should the company’s angels prove to be from the dark side.
More broadly, the animal sector of the industry is trying to rein itself in, and the International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories [www.iaopc.com] offers an Official Guide of Terms and Definitions. Not to be outdone, the Pet Loss Professionals Alliance [www.iccfa.com] publishes its own “Definitions and Standards for the Cremation of Companion Animals.” Grief-stricken pet owners can therefore take heart: the death care biz is doing its best to prevent the switching of those little blue bags at death.
