It’s one of those facts of life: If you have a pet, you eventually will have to deal with its death. It’s a real hurt and a deep grief. Pets are always there for us—giving us a picture of what loyalty and unconditional love look like. Even a recalcitrant cat has his way of offering companionship. I know. I just buried one—a 16-year old gold and white named Puddin, or Pud, or Puddy, or Pudster (pictured). He answered to all of those, especially when I dropped a spoonful of Fancy Feast in his bowl.
He follows in a long line of great pets that have “gone on to be with the Lord.”
Which brings up the question, did they go on to be with the Lord? It’s not a question asked just by children. In fact, pose the question “Do pets go to heaven?” on Google and you’ll get over 36 million results. That’s nearly as many as the question “Is smoking a sin?” (37 million). And you can rest assured that when a teen loses a pet, the question of pets in heaven will be a prominent thought.
In my younger days of dealing with pet grief, I met that question with a matter-of-fact “Of course they’re in heaven. If heaven is perfect, they have to be there.”
Then one day I made a surprising discovery in Genesis that gave me a little more biblical backing. Animals have the “breath of life” in them (Gen. 1:30; 6:17), including the pairs that were spared on Noah’s ark (Gen. 7:15). There always seemed to be the view that pets can’t be in heaven because they don’t contain the breath of life.
Of course there is no biblical evidence to suggest that animals were made in the image of God, as we are, nor do pets have the capacity to choose to believe in God or not, though if you go by the hiss factor you might think certain cats have made the choice for “not.” But still, there is biblical evidence to suggest that animals will be with us in the new heaven and new earth (e.g., Isaiah 11 and 65). And if animals are there, why not our pets?
Obviously this is not a serious exegetical study. It is, however, a nice exercise that is getting me to do something that God is constantly urging throughout Scripture: think about heaven. And the more I think about it, the more I think that, when we get there, it really won’t matter to us whether our pets are there or not. Heaven will be that mind-blowing. I can see myself saying, “Pud, you’re here! Great! I’m off to see Jesus.”
But on this side of heaven, it’s a comfort to think that our pets might be there.
One more thing:
I’d like to leave you with a writing from my late wife Dana who passed away in 2009 from breast cancer. We brought abovementioned Pud into our lives as a chemotherapy companion during our first battle with breast cancer in 1999. Prior to battling the cancer’s recurrence seven years later, Dana wrote a few chapters of a book she and her mother, Sue Buchanan, were developing. One of these chapters happened to be on this very question of pets and heaven. It seems an appropriate time to share this light-hearted but heart-warming essay on “Pet Theology.”