Postscript. When a bear is not a bear.

Now that you have read the original story about our cats and dogs and the three bears that filled our little house in Kentucky you may find this postscript a bit more on the funny side of life. Because here is a side story that happened a few years later that no one knows about. 

Mocha, Felony and Nikko were all buried next to each other in the Pet Cemetery section of Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. Because Nikko and Felony were a lifelong mated pair I wanted them buried in the same grave site. Felony died first and I had designed a granite grave marker with her name on the left side with space for Nikko's name to be added on the right after he died.

Highland Cemetery reserved a large spot to accommodate three grave sites for Felony, Nikko, Mocha and Sassy, who died in 2014, and the section around them has now filled up completely with hundreds of other pets.  

Here is a photo of Nikko and Mocha visiting the grave after the marker had been placed in 2001. The last photo shows the grave site after both Nikko had died in 2004 and Mocha passed away in 2008.

I had granite grave stones engraved with each of their names as we always referred to them, Nikko Bear, Felony Bear and Mocha Bear because I was very proud to call them The Three Bears wherever we went. A photo of the two markers is below.

One day the manager of the cemetery told me he had been asked by a very concerned pet owner if there were "bears" buried among the pets. I'm not sure if the client was genuinely worried or didn't think a bear could be a pet or not but they obviously only focused on the word "Bear" and didn't read the whole grave stone.

TODAY

I had promised Ruff and Bess we would visit the cemetery to see Mom and Axl. I didn't take them to either the wake or the funeral and I thought it would bring some closure, at least to me. It may sound silly but I think Ruff has been acting like he's trying to find Jacqueline in the house. I caught him several times laying his head on the green powered recliner chair where Jacqueline sat every day and he was making very stressful sounds, almost like he was crying. I must have mistaken his actions for something else because every once in awhile he would walk into a corner someplace and stand there making the same sounds like he didn't know how to back out and needed help. Then it hit me that the green recliner must still have smelled like his Mom because no one else ever sat in it so I moved it into a corner out of his reach.

While at the cemetery I cleaned up the grave markers for the other four Rottweilers buried there and took some new photos.