Rex in Repose
Posted on January 7, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
The lovely object you see here is an urn, done in canopic style, and made to hold the ashes of my cat Rex, who died in the past year. It was made for me by T. Dane Haggard, a frequent reader of the Whatever (you’ve seen him in comments as “Dane”), who I must say not only made a gorgeous piece of pottery, but rather exactly estimated the correct size of the urn needed to hold Rex’s ashes: The ashes fit perfectly inside. Dane also provided the handsome satin-lined wood box you see behind the urn, in order to store and display the urn. In all, a beautiful and extremely thoughtful piece of work from Dane; there is no better place, I think, to keep the remains of my cat.
Here you can see the current resting place of Rex the Cat: On the top of my bookshelf. Appropriately for a canopic urn, just as the Ancient Egyptians had servants in the afterlife, so you can see the stuffed effigies of Socrates and Charles Darwin, tasked to serve Rex in the afterlife, to feed him tender bits, pet him at his request, and to pick up the vomit he so loved to hork in surprising places around the house, and is now no doubt continuing to do so in his new kitty heaven environs. Certainly a job worthy of great philosophers and naturalists!
Thank you, Dane, for such a fine piece of work. I am honored to have gotten it, to rest my cat in it, and to have it in my home.
That is beautiful. Nice work, Dane!
When our Sammy died, we kept her ashes in the box they came in until spring, then scattered them in a hole before planting a magnolia tree. We moved soon after that and I’ve been afraid to go past our old house (or send a friend by it) because I don’t want to know if the tree is gone. I asked a friend to check when she was in the area for Christmas and not to tell me unless the tree was still there, but she hasn’t called and I don’t know if it’s because the tree is gone or because she forgot.
I’m just glad it got there in one piece. I like that while I have your work on my bookshelf…you have one of mine on yours.
You’re so very lucky to have a kind person to do that for you.
As a warning to others who have lost pets and are unsure of what to do with their remains, you can read parts of my recent tragedy here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/stardustgirl/114121.html
It’s for that reason we had Jim Dandy, my most recent companion, cremated.
At this risk of making it sound like I don’t appreciate the primary object of this entry (insert appropriately solemn oohing and aahing here)….that plushie Socrates (my brain insists upon using the Bill&Ted pronounciation) is just about the cutest thing ever.
I’m a 61 year old lawyer, mother, grandmother, and sf reader since age 10. And a lifelong cat person. It is particularly nice to have a resting place made by a friend. It really doesn’t matter if you like the aesthetics of it or not. Its just really soothing. I don’t happen to have a potter friend, so I went online and found rather nice urns and wooden boxes made to hold remains of four legged friends. Don’t have a link, but if I found it, you can too. Leah, a bluepoint siamese who helped me survive my first marriage and two kids is in a little bronze urn. She put up with me for over 20 years. Mikhail BarishnaCAT, a russian blue looking fellow, and Martin Luther Cat, a feisty brook no nonsense orange stray were captured by my 2nd husband. Lord knows he needed someone, and he did love them. Macatma Ghandi, who looked like a silver Egyptian mau but weighed 20 pounds,(found in a hunters trap in a nearby forest) is in a beautiful wooden box I got online. Now THERE was a CAT. Incredible intense creature. Likely an alien put here to study us, he ended up a true friend. Now we have Pearl, a gray, pink, and white blend who foolishly bonded to my dogless doglover husband, necessitating my getting Bailey, a tiny tuxedo stray who was being kicked around a trailer park. He cleaned up well and realizes that I am the REAL cat person. And so, we have Pearl Bailey. None of the kids know what that means. Its GOOD to be older. Very happy to find you. I’m wordy sometimes, a combination of the lawyer/german/add brain stuff. Cut what you want. Annemarie
Are you sure that those are Socrates and Darwin? They look like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets.
Well, you know. Either way is good.