Shattered Fine Thinking

Animals, humans falling into that category as well, have the amazing power to subject themselves to amazing pain to stay alive. They stay alive not because they are afraid of death, but because of the pain others will succomb to after they die. I've seen animals going through the worst pains fighting to stay alive. My boss's pit-bull had lyme disease and a fractured vertebrate. His back would curl up in pain when he was alone, but the second a familiar face walked in the room he would get a bright eyed expression on his face and act like everything was fine. The most recent death of an animal to me was Boo-Kitty...yeah..some people don't like the name, but we gave her that name as very young children...she lived a long long life and never complained when she died a slow death of however many illnesses linked to old age...when you walked in the room she just started purring..even right before she died...animals are tough..not because they want to stay in pain, but because they know that others don't want them to die..and will be very upset once they are gone...so they hold on..and try their best to act like nothing is wrong...i guess a death like getting run over by a car (or traffic accident for us humans) is somehow better than a slow disease..because you can think of them as having had a happy life and it stolen from them suddenly..rather than seeing them fight it to the very end..all the while trying to make you, the healthy one, feel like everything is okay..but it will be..sooner or later