This is the end of the first full week without Mr. Silverman, who was always a very social cat. When I saw Romeo out on the deck by himself one afternoon, I thought he looked lonely. I think it’s quite likely. Silverman was well established in the household when Romeo decided to be adopted, and has been a constant presence. Then, suddenly, he’s gone. I don’t know how cats experience such things, but I’ll be he’s missed.
Anyway, there are now seven somewhat elderly cats in the house. Still a lot of cat energy, though. We move on.
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It might be interesting to do a few experiments to see whether the remaining cats in any way mourn Silverman or “respect” the memory of him. For example, if Silverman had his own food bowl distinctively different from the other cats’ bowls, I wonder whether the remaining cats would avoid Silverman’s bowl and perhaps not eat or drink from it. Similarly for a blanket, or a favorite toy, or a special place to lie down. I’ve seen TV shows where elephants keep returning to the bones of a dead member of the herd, poking the bones with their tusks and sometimes trumpeting.
All living things have souls. Those who are on the higher levels share the ability to understand and feel the concept of loss. One does not have to “experiment” to know this basic concept of life and the “karma” that we all deal with.
As higher beings in the scheme of life, humans should understand the concepts of empathy and loss. We certainly don’t have to “experiment” to know that many higher thinking animals understand the concept of loss of a companion or friend.
For being such a smart man, I believe you do lack a certain level of empathy if you don’t understand that even a cat can feel pain and loss.
I am surprised that there wasn’t some cats looking for him in the first two days. Normally, if there are cats that are close buddies, the remaining cats will be seen wandering around and looking in familiar places to try to locate the departed. Often times, they will let out a loud meow to tell their friend to come out from hiding. Really heart breaking to see this.
When I heard that Silverman had passed, I was curious to see how the other cats would react to his not being there. We had two cats who were siblings but not particularly close to each other. Kaniba did not pay much attention to Panda Bear, her brother; she was devoted to our third cat Buffer before he passed. There were several years after Buffer’s death in which Panda and Kaniba only had each other. During the several weeks after Panda died, Kaniba would go to the places in the house where Panda had secluded himself when he was feeling very ill as if looking for him. A number of times she let out what sounded like mournful yowling meows. Niba did this for about a month before she seemed to return to her normal demeanor.
I had 3 cats and the oldest died in 2010. The two remaining kitties truly went into morning. They stopped eating for almost one week. All they did was walk around the house looking for her and meowing. It was so sad watching them. They are two male brothers from the same litter. My oldest cat was their Hanai mother who raised them since they were 12 weeks old.