Upsetting Day: Dead Pet

I know you saw the title of this article and thought "dead pets, what a rich well of comedy." The full title of the book is Dead Pet: Send Your Best Little Buddy Off In Style, and it's a comedy pet funeral book. It even has a fun little Photoshop on the cover of a dead cat being blasted into space by a cute little firework rocket. The dead cat on the cover is reaching toward the viewer as if he's still alive and doesn't want to go to space but that's fine. I'm sure this cover didn't upset anyone.

Except, hey, guess what? It did upset people because there's a second cover for this book with the same copyright year. It's titled Dead Pet: A Layman's Guide To Pet Undertaking, which I have to think didn't test well. It has a kinder cover but a way spookier title. You don't want to ask someone what their hobby is and have them respond, "Amateur pet undertaking." That's the worst answer. No, wait, I thought of a worse one, amateur pet taxidermy, which is covered in a chapter of this book that I will not talk about.

Dead Pet: A Layman's Guide To Pet Undertaking comes with a pretty apologetic disclaimer for the book that reads to me like one of the reviews for the original version of the book said, "You're a sick person for writing this," and the ol' editing team decided to make some changes mid-printing. We know this book didn't get a second printing because pet death comedy is a very niche audience.

Yeah, the disclaimer in Dead Pet; Send Your Best Little Buddy Off in Style reads a little differently. It begins with, "To the full extent permissible by law, the authors and publishers shall have no liability for any loss or damage to a pet (dead, decomposing, alive, or just plain unwell), however it arises, resulting from anyone who does not comprehend that this is a work of humor." It then goes on to call out "pet lovers" and "animal rights activists" as people who might specifically have problems with the book. Always a good sign when the main audience for your book about pets should not be people who love pets.

The ideal reader has to love pet death, I guess. So according to the disclaimer, this is a book for aspiring serial killers and if you don't like it that's your problem, nerd. Cool, let's dive right in. Don't worry; here's a tasteful rendering of a parrot that's suddenly fallen dead from his little perch to lighten the mood.

I'm trying to figure out what portion of this book is humorous, and it starts off pretty rough. Seems like a lot of very regular advice for what to do if your pet is going to die, like maybe memorialize them with some portraits, take out insurance on them if you can, and scout a spot to bury them. There's an artist's rendering of how to euthanize a guinea pig with chloroform that will haunt me forever, and I won't show you. Not finding a lot of attempts at comedy here. Is it possible this is labeled as a humor book so that if somebody chloroforms their beloved pet wrong, they can't sue the writers of the book because they taught you how to euthanize the guinea pig as a bit?

Oh good, there's a Voltaire quote in my comedy pet death book. That's exactly what I needed. Also, I needed to learn the phrase excarnation, which is the process of leaving a body outside so that the soft tissues are "stripped away by predators and the elements." Hilarious. I'm dying. You're going to have to excarnate my ass by the time I'm done with this book. Please don't at-home taxidermy me.

Is it too much to expect a Michigan J. Frog vibe from this? I thought there would be a silly dancing frog in a tophat who would explain excarnation to me. Surely we can jazz up the idea of a beloved pet's flesh being torn off by birds in an eco-friendly way.

I think some of the humor starts to come in during the section on pet funerals. I'll admit that the idea of an extravagant pet event is almost always funny– dog wedding, hilarious; gerbil bar mitzvah, incredible; turtle funeral, could be fun? Especially because those dudes can live to be over a hundred, so they've had their time. However, did we need to make one of the dogs pulling the customized pet hearse look like he's grieving? I'm going to pretend he's just sad because they put that dumb little hat on him.

One thing I will give this book is it encourages pageantry for your pet funeral, and I will never be against pageantry. I'll attend a New Orleans-style jazz funeral for any goldfish. I don't even have to have met it. Tell me where the funeral is, and I'm there.

I also like that the book presents some pet funeral etiquette, which I desperately needed to know. For instance, did you know that in a New Orleans-style jazz funeral procession, the mourners should be ranked according to their intimacy with the deceased and size relative to each other? So, the tall raccoon that Mr. Whiskers hated goes before the short cat that Mr. Whiskers seemed indifferent to, but after Mr. Whiskers' half-brother, whom he also hated, I think? I probably would have been trying to sort out the size arrangements for the cat funeral procession for months without the help of this book.

Maybe the people who were offended by the cover were also upset at the abundance of pet funeral etiquette this book offers. The authors are going full Emily Post on these pet funerals. There are very specific rules about how to mourn for each religion and even what refreshments should be served after the memorial. After all, we must maintain decorum at all times, even at our New Orleans-style jazz pet funeral.

When you read the phrase tasteful pet funeral-themed refreshments, what comes to mind? My best friend's cat died unexpectedly one night in high school. The next day, I brought her cat-shaped cookies with red icing on them so they looked like they were bleeding, and she said it was the "nicest and most insane thing" anyone had ever done for her, so, in my experience, you've got to be really careful when choosing pet death-themed refreshments. Some people might be upset with a bone cake, especially if the deceased is not a dog, and this is simply a reminder that they'll be bones soon.

Ok, this, I have to admit, is a little funny. It's in the final chapter that this book has made me chuckle. The last chapter is called "The Aftermath," and it has some good advice about taking your time to grieve and some bad advice about contacting a psychic if you want to speak with your deceased pet. The idea that an animal cannot communicate via Ouija board because it can't spell is hilarious. The afterworld will allow your dog to cross the bounds of death to communicate with you, but they're not teaching him English. That would be crazy!

There were no differences between the original version of this book and the more tasteful one, other than the cover and the disclaimer. The more tasteful cover of the book is a drawing from the section called "sky burials" that suggests you can launch a small pet into space on a firework, which is more of a Logan Paul prank than a proper pet burial. Everyone grieves differently, though; so you can't really do it wrong unless you channel your grief into a humor book about pet funerals, and then a revised humor book about pet funerals with an apology for the first one.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Brockway FAMOUSLY Loves the Meat Milly, our resident pet funeral maximalist, and PoxCo certified excarnation consultant.

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