Barking mad is a phrase that might spring to mind if you should ever pursue morbid tourism to its kitschy limits and seek out the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park. It’s a very contained sort of name for a place that really is overflowing with occupants, some of them formerly famous. In a Hollywood sort of way, of course, this being movie-mad Los Angeles.
The pet cemetery is quite a way from Hollywood itself, hiding out in Calabasas, on the far northern outskirts of the city. This area, which escaped the devastation caused by the January wildfires, is one of California’s most expensive suburbs. The Kourtney Kardashian lives here somewhere. So does the actor Will Smith.
Malibu is nearby. Bob Dylan’s place is there. But that lot are all hidden away in their mansions and on their compounds, behind gates and at the ends of long drives – and a lot less interesting than the inhabitants of the 4ha of sun-kissed slopes that are the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park.
The park sits at the end of a lane between a light industrial zone and – from the “ponk-ponk” sounds coming over a high fence – a tennis court complex.
There could be stars, looking perfect, knocking their balls about over there, but there’s more celebrity on this side of the fence. All dead, naturally, but not forgotten, if the fresh floral displays dotted across this eternal animal park are anything to go by.
Mostly, the last resting places of more than 40,000 animals here are marked by discreet lawn-level plaques, though there’s nothing remotely low level about the epitaphs most of them bear. This is where the barking-mad business slips in.
But some guidance would be good when you’re in search of posthumous celebrity. The people at the cemetery office aren’t much help to a gloomy tourist. They’re still open for the business of burying here and, as I swung in the door, full of honest curiosity, one of them was in the midst of discussing the disposal of a beloved dead dog and I felt a little surplus to requirements.
In the end, the only map the people in charge could offer was a bit vague on where the celebrity plots were, though the really old section, going back almost a century, is found first on the left – the most frolicsome slope and with the nicest view.
At the top of the next slope along is the most outstanding gravestone, a big old-fashioned human-sized affair. Here lies Tawny, the MGM lion, the one seen roaring in the famous old studio’s opening titles, though there may have been more than one lion featured during the years in that iconic logo.
But it’s Tawny (1918-40) who’s remembered here. His ostentatious granite headstone bears a striking photo and the lines: “With malice toward none, he bore the adversities of his life with mankind. Gentle, lifelong protector of his adored tomcat Pal, who sleeps beside him here.”
Eternal rest
This place opened for business in 1928 as the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery, the vision of veterinarian Eugene Jones, whose clientele included many Hollywood heavyweights of the time. When their beloved mutts, moggies or – in the case of movie star Mae West – monkeys, died, some of them found eternal rest in the vet’s pet cemetery. When West’s monkey, Boogie, died in 1933, there was a story about it in the newspapers, mentioning that a lined casket was made especially for the burial.
For a while, back then, it was quite the thing for the famous furred to be interred here. After West’s monkey’s headstone suddenly disappeared, apparently stolen by celebrity ghouls, the stars became less showy with their declarations of undying affection, but the mad love is on display everywhere you look in the epitaphs.
“And the angels now watch over our beloved Marko as he runs amongst the fleecy clouds of heaven,” runs one delusion from the 1960s. Or, for Buckwheat: “Your pain is gone but ours lives on, eased only by the love you left behind. Sleep tight Wheaty Pie.” And one that simply marks “Darling Mr Poo.”
Many of the plaques fail to mention the make of the deceased loved one, though many have doggy sorts of names. Like singer Jimmy Durante’s Muggins and Teddy (1929-1940, “beloved by all Charlie Chaplin Studio”), and it’s clear what we’re dealing with in the message for Lauren Bacall’s Droopy (“a wonderful little pup”).
Less clear is the memorial for Icy House (“my beloved baby, I love you more than yesterday & less than tomorrow” signed “your father”). And then there’s tragedy mapped out on a stone adorned with a picture of a faded-looking chihuahua called Paris, who died only weeks old in disturbing circumstances (“accidentally fell out of car’s window and while driving was run over”), buried alongside the disturbingly named Baby Austin (“four days of life due to hole in lungs”).
There are cats, including old movie star Lionel Barrymore’s Pukie Barrymore (“my dear little cat”). There’s Sugar, who appears from the photo to be a guinea pig (“forever living in our hearts”). And Killer (“who brought love to us and joy to all”). Hopefully, a dog.
There’s a stone for a parrot called Joy (“fly in heaven, you will be forever in our hearts”) and, nearby, Schmang, a cockatiel. There are horses, too, though by the artwork for Zanny (“for 24 years you carried me proudly. Now I carry you in my heart.”) there might also be a zebra.
There are plaques with famous dog names on them. One for Toto (1926-1939, “forever in our hearts”) and Rin Tin Tin (“your life, like your name, now legend”) and Lassie (1947-1957, “your memory with us”).
But Toto the dog from The Wizard of Oz is supposedly buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery among the human stars, and there were several Lassies and Rin Tin Tins.
The park has its own crematorium and, for those who prefer an indoors arrangement, there’s a striking mausoleum next to it on the park’s highest point, gazing down. The air is icy inside.
But there are people around in the sun outside, laying flowers, talking quietly to much-missed moggies. And there’s a gravedigger at work. From a distance, the grave looks dog-sized.
