'So more and more they've been turning to animals for this connection, for unconditional love, for grounding a relationship with no criticism in it and a lot of love.' 'People just don't get much connection from each other and the institutions that they used to depend on to lift them up, particularly religion, technology, politics,' Katz said. The rise of screen culture - Americans spend seven hours a day on average in front of a screen the rise of the divorce rate families moving away from each other.'Īlso a factor is the decline of social connectedness. 'You can measure it almost precisely against a lot of other things that were happening in America over the last 30 years. Researching the context of this grief and loss, Katz placed it against a growing decline of familial and social connectedness. Studying and deconstructing the stories, he was struck by the conclusion that the guilt was not accurate: 'There was a disconnection, I think, between what people were feeling and what was actually happening.' Katz was also struck by the guilt he heard from people in their stories about the deaths of their animals: 'They had waited too long, they didn't wait long enough they did the right thing, they did the wrong thing.'

'So as one has risen, the other has really declined, and I don't think they're unrelated,' he said. The backdrop of this rising attachment to animals, including the animal rescue movement, is a seeming disconnection from the idea of helping people. How we're spending $32 billion per year on health care for pets in a country that does not want to spend much health care on people.' 'The reality today is very, very different. They were on the periphery of life,' he said. When his dog died, he just went out and got another one, no fuss, no bother, no complicated grieving. Katz used his father as an example of the old attitude. It didn't really happen 30 or 40 years ago,' Katz said. 'And if you research it, which I did, this is really a very new phenomena in America. 'I talked with a couple hundred people, I talked to a bunch of vets, I talked to psychiatrists, psychologists, and they were all reporting this enormous spike in pain and loss and guilt over pet loss. 'The more I got into the subject, the more fascinated I was by what I was hearing,' he said. Katz currently has four dogs, three donkeys and two cats on his Bedlam Farm, where he has lived since 2003.

Writing about animals in this culture ends up being a lot about people and society - especially when dealing with dogs and cats, he said. 'It's very difficult it's very painful it's getting worse, and we don't really have any books to recommend to people,' Katz said, summarizing the comments. They were seeing a huge increase of deep grieving for pets. Several vets encouraged him to write about grieving for animals. Katz said the idea for the book came from a veterinary conference in Orlando he attended a few years ago.

Going Home by Jon Katz