Barley was so personable and social, I called her the Walmart greeter cat. She had to come and meet whoever was at the door. She’d make a fuss over them, and if you wanted to pet her, that would be great. She was a proper southern hostess and a belle of the ball. She was a long-haired mega floof, and I had her for 17 years.
Back in 2009, I’d done three rounds of interviews with kittens at the Greenville Humane Society, and she and I clicked from the start. I was in grad school then. I was doing my doctorate, and I was dissertating, and barley kept me company for those many long hours in my office with my computer, my data, and barley. One time I was working on my dissertation, She walked across my keyboard. She selected a block of text, changed the language to Greek. I still have no idea how to do that in keystrokes. I’ll always regret not including her in the acknowledgement section of my dissertation. Bar, I apologize.
She had the sweetest personality without being bland or predictable. I sang to her constantly. She hated it, but she tolerated it. She knew things, but she let you figure them out for yourself. She had no hunting skills, at all. She would have starved in the wild.
That said, this girl so loved food. She lived to eat more than any cat I’ve ever known. She ate human food that I guess other cats like, but also random things like almonds. Almond butter, almond paste. You couldn’t open a jar of almond butter without her coming around. How do cats get a taste for almonds? Avocados. She liked avocados.
She was a scaredy cat. Hated noisy things like trash trucks, small children, aluminum foil. She listened. Good listener. Patient. Spending time with her was so relaxing, It was like being at a spa. This was the effect she had on people. She could just bring your nervous system into regulation. A hundred times a day, every day, just knowing she was there brought my stress level down. And if you’ve listened to this show for a few years, you might know she was briefly the host of this very podcast series. I will drop that episode in the notes.
In the end, she also let me down easy. So it was maybe about two months ago now, she had started slowly pulling back. from all the many things we did together. You know, the routines and the rituals you have with a pet. She let me get used to her physical presence not being there bit by bit. Then in the final weeks, ugh, it was a month of crying. If you’ve ever had to put a pet down, you know how rough it is. It’s rough on you. It’s rough on them. It’s rough on everyone. Your routine’s off. You got extra vet visits. You’ve got medications. You’re on Poop patrol. I was trying new food flavors just to try to get her to eat. And then there’s the exhaustion that
comes with the monitoring, the watching. And you know they’re in pain. I told her I’d follow her lead. Just let me know when it was time.
And she did.
“There’s something about loss,” my cousin told me. “There’s nothing to do but go through it.” The sadness is so heavy. But no one’s done anything wrong. There’s been no offense. It’s no one’s fault. Just a good thing is coming to an end. You feel terrible. But there’s no target for the feeling. Nowhere to go with it. You can’t do anything with that feeling. Except feel it.
The day I buried Barley, I made a playlist. Songs about her. Lots of lovely songs. Some emotional songs. Some inside jokes too. There’s a song called The Lucky One by Raul Malo. And Barley had an older cat sister, Katie. Katie died eight years ago. Barley and Kate never really got along. Katie was more of a loner and she could get jealous of all the attention that Barley would get because she was so social. So Kate would mutter under her breath about “the fluffy one. Everyone loves the fluffy one.” So Barley took the song, The Lucky One, changed the lyrics to The Fluffy One, and made it her theme song.
So I had that playlist running while I was getting things ready for a little service I had planned. See, Barley greeted everyone. That was her nature. So when she died, I couldn’t just grieve her by myself. I had to go where she went: outward toward other people. 17 years, lots of people got to know her. And I wanted to honor that. So I had this pack of pink index cards and I took them and cut out hearts. And on each heart, I wrote people’s names, people that had come to know her, people whose lives she was in.
I invited my friend and her husband and kids over. and we gathered on the patio near where Barley would be buried. I had the playlist going in the background. My friend started, what would become a lovely service by just sharing a memory she had of barley. Other people had sent cards and messages and texts, so I thought I would read them out. And by the time I realized it was my turn to say something, I was so far from being sad, because we had just shared all of these great memories. All I could do was say how lucky I was to have such a cool cat that so many people knew, that so many people cared about. How she brought us together, how she was bringing us together now, and she brought out good things in us all.
About that time, a fun song came on the playlist, and we started to dance. My friend’s husband lowered Barley’s little coffin into the hole I had dug for her, and I’d ask the kids if they could help me by dropping the pink hearts down onto Barley’s coffin so all our love could go with her. I planned the service partly for them, thinking that this might be their first funeral, or maybe their first up-close experience with death. I had learned about kids’ and pets’ deaths from Dr. Jane Shaw, who’s a veterinary and an excellent communicator, and she was on this show as well. I’ll put that episode in the notes.
So my friend’s husband is lowering Barley into the place I had for her, and I was watching. And as the kids went to drop the hearts in, they started to read out the names that were on each heart and then let the heart fall, and drop in. I hadn’t asked them to do that. I hadn’t expected it, but it was so moving and so beautiful. I just stood there and watched them. And it was my favorite part of the day.
We covered her up. We cried. And then we went inside and ate dessert, because Barley had a sweet tooth. We had her favorite: Trader Joe’s Almond Kringle. The adults started sharing stories of pets that they’d had. Sweet ones, crotchety ones, all characters we shared our lives with.
I’ve listened to that playlist a bunch of times since then, and somehow it feels like Barley’s around again. I shared the playlist with friends and family. My one brother texted me to say he was going to listen to the playlist at work that day. A few hours later, I get another text from him. He said when he heard one song in particular, he realized that that artist was going to be in town. So he stopped what what he was doing, got online, bought tickets. That show’s later this month.
17 years. She taught me many things, as our pets do. One of the things that’s on my mind a lot is: spend time with your people. Nothing fancy, no pressure. It’s not a competition. Just: You here? Great. Let’s hang out. Just spend time. Just the way you are. Let your people know that spending time with them is one of your favorite things in the world to do.
This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners. Audio engineering and music from Joe Liebel. Additional music from Alexis Rounds. Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, LLC.
