Père Lachaise for Pets

A suburb of Paris, Asnières, already well known to aficionados of Van Gogh and Seurat, has another claim to fame. Here lie the bodies of the non-human creatures we have held dear to our hearts, a final resting place for our pets.

Many of us will understand the woman who wrote on her canine companion's tombstone:  "Always disappointed by humans, never by my dog."

Someone else writes : "Chouchou, you are the son I never had."

And yet another : "Kiki you were the most beautiful thing in my life."*

While we will search in vain for a sepulchre of Richelieu's cats, we can find here a monument to an Alpine Spaniel named Barry (1800-1814) belonged to the monks of the Hospice du Grand Saint-Bernard (the Alpine Spaniel is a forerunner of the Saint-Bernard) and saved 40 lives in his short one



Established in 1899, it is reputed to be the first cemetery of its kind of the modern era. It serves as final resting place not only for cats, dogs, and birds, but also for horses, lions, calves, pigs, sheep, and a monkey. Some of these illustrious friends now resting here in peace are as follows:

Moustache, a French Napleonic soldier dog (1799-1811)
Dogs from the Great War's trenches, Mémère or Dick.
Rintintin, movie dog, and his descendent, Rintintin IV star of the television series 

The pets of Camille Saint-Saëns, Alexandre Dumas, Sacha Guitry and so many others.
The 40,000th animal to be buried there was a stray dog that came to its gates to die in 1958. The management built him a monument.

                                                                Rintintin 1929

                    

Save up if you want your own animal friend buried in this Père Lachaise of pets for the small plots run to 1,000 euros













*« Toujours déçue par les humains, jamais par mon chien »

« Chouchou, tu es le fils que je n’ai jamais eu »

« Kiki, tu as été ce que j’eus de plus beau dans ma vie »