5.4 Pet Cemetery

The following album details the religious affiliations of animal companions (aka “pets”), largely based on my visit to a pet columbarium in northern Taiwan in spring 2006. The ideas surrounding this pet columbarium are largely Japanese imports. All photographs, unless otherwise noted, were taken in spring 2006 by Douglas Gildow. More on Taiwanese typologies of manes can be found in Gildow 2005.

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5.4.1	5.4.2	5.4.3	5.4.4	5.4.5	5.4.6
Fig. 5.4.2. Christian pets lie under a crucifix and a placard that reads “Jesus loves you.” Fig. 5.4.1. Just as there are different roads to truth, there are different entranceways to the Christian and Buddhist areas of the columbarium (=a structure of vaults lined with recesses for cinerary urns; cinerary=containing or used for ashes especially of the cremated dead: definitions in this album are from Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary).   Fig. 5.4.6. This white dog has the Holy Bible in his compartment. Despite its Christian affiliation, it is presumable not opposed to the traditional Chinese jade pendant on its doorway, the presence of which may be related to ancient Chinese beliefs that (might) have linked jade as a grave object to the preservation of bodily remains. Incidentally, this sort of small, white, fluffy, and probably yappy dog (a swfy dog) is strongly represented among those chosen for installation in the columbarium. I hypothesize that the ratio of (swfy dogs:all dogs) is higher within the columbarium than it is among Taiwanese pet dogs in general. Whether this is true, and if so whether it indicates that Taiwanese humans more easily attribute human characteristics to swfy dogs than to other dogs,  remains to be studied. 5.4.7	Fig. 5.4.3. Christian pets prefer crucifix imagery in their compartments. Regardless of their age at death, or their age in “animal years,” based on the ritual paraphernalia in their compartments, deceased pets seem to be universally treated as if they were children of about five years of age. Fig. 5.4.5. This male Siberian Husky, Allen, evidently had a fondness of soccer balls and motorcycles. It is uncertain whether his death was related to the fact that huskies tend to suffer from heat stroke in subtropical/tropical Taiwan. More research is necessary to determine whether the water in this compartment and the one next to it is holy water or not. 5.4.8	Fig. 5.4.4. Pets, like less important family members such as women and younger males, are cremated, as the small size of the urns in these compartments indicate. No provisions are made for second burial, bone cleaning, or preservation of bones in larger urns (compare with photos in album 5.3). Nor are pets buried in lineage mausoleums 佳城. In the typology of manes in Taiwan, pets seem to occupy a liminal space between ghosts (of the weak, hungry, pitiable kind) and deceased children. 5.4.9	5.4.10	5.4.11	5.4.12
Fig. 5.4.7. We are not provided with a funerary portrait of the pet Pipi 皮皮, but judging from the ritual objects present in its compartment we can surmise that it was probably (1) a dog, and (2) female. However, given that some deceased dogs have Hello Kitty (ハローキティ ) dolls installed in their compartments, it is also possible that this compartment contains the remains of a cat with a fondness for Snoopy-like dog dolls. (There are actually not very many Christian pets in the columbarium, and I’ve covered them rather extensively. I apologize for having over-represented the importance of Christianity among Taiwanese pets, but many Anglophones are understandably concerned about the diffusion of their faith abroad.) Fig. 5.4.8. We are now in the much larger Buddhist section of the columbarium, which is presided over by a Buddha statue and by a smaller statue of the bodhisattva Dizang, special protector of the dead, just as in human columbaria (see album 5.3). The Buddhist section is filled with mourners engaged in ritual activities, such as preparation and presentation of offerings for the deceased as well as communication with the deceased via flipping coins as if the coins were divination blocks. Incidentally, the 2006 pamplet for the columbarium states that a compartment, held in perpetuity, costs NT $32000 (roughly US $1000), which does not include cremation fees. Fig. 5.4.10. Pinky, a Buddhist, has a lotus decoration on its compartment, as does the Buddhist swfy dog, below. (By “Buddhist” I sometimes mean “pet with Buddhist owners,” pace Richard Dawkins. I do not believe that such use of adjectives constitutes animal abuse. Also, whereas followers of Lev Vygotsky [see his Language and Thought] and Clifford Geertz might claim that public representations, esp. language, are necessary preconditions for the development of mental representations, I disagree. Since linguists almost universally agree that only humans possess language, and thinking is hardly possible without mental representations, such claims imply that animals cannot think, much less be Buddhists [assuming that being a Buddhist is predicated on the ability to think]. But from my experiences in raising a cat I believe that Vygotsky and Geertz are wrong, and the Buddhist tradition supports me: Holmes Welch notes cases of turtles and cows showing Buddhist understanding, and of cows receiving the Three Refuges [see The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900-1950, p. 317].) For more on animal emotions and thoughts, see books by Temple Grandin and the coverage in National Geographic (March 2008, “Animal Minds”). Fig. 5.4.12. Ritual paraphernalia and offerings on a sacrificial table, including two ten NT-dollar coins (in place of divination blocks); silver paper money (indicating the status of the deceased is closer to ghosts than to deities); paper models of human-shaped clothing (resembling offerings given to ghosts on paper money, and suggesting anthropomorphizing of the postmortem pets); cooked foods (suggesting the deceased are more like humans than they are like transcendent deities); and paper lotus-seats (suggestive of rebirth in the Western Land of Ultimate Bliss). 5.4.13	Fig. 5.4.9. Notice the young woman lighting incense to the right. But below, outside on the first floor, I noticed a sign prohibiting the use of incense. Photographs like this one expose the folly of scholars who use normative, prescriptive texts as substitutes for empirical, ethnographic observation. Fig. 5.4.11. Although pets of the order Carnivora predominate (esp. those of the family Canidae, followed by those of the family Felidae), other pets are also present, as this member of the order Lagomorpha proves. Evidence suggests a universal or near universal preference for installing the remains of pets belonging to the class Mammalia. 5.4.14	5.4.15
Fig. 5.4.13. A passage indicating that offerings left overnight will be taken by the columbarium staff. More observation is needed to verify whether this normative claim corresponds to actual behavior. Fig. 5.4.14. A collective “beast spirit stele” (for shou 獸, or four-legged mammals that are not too small), resembling a human spirit-tablet 神主牌, on the columbarium grounds. A pamphlet indicates that this stele is for pets who are cremated en masse and whose ashes are then scattered on the grounds. I am unsure whether the swastika on the top constitutes discrimination against non-Buddhist pets that are cremated en masse.	Fig. 5.4.15. While the beast spirit stele we just saw on columbarium grounds appears innocuous, the stele in this photograph, erected in Shōwa 昭和 12 (1937) was built next to a porcine death camp. Was it erected out of pity or fear for the deceased? More research is necessary. In Muzha, Taipei, Taiwan (Douglas Gildow, 24 March 2006).

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