Emperor Jonathan I laid flowers on the graves in Wrythe Pet Cemetery this afternoon during an annual ceremony of remembrance for the departed pets of the Imperial Family.
Pets Day has been held on 17 May each year since 2010. Minor repairs are made to Wrythe Pet Cemetery, the final resting place of four fish, a crab, and a stillborn bullmastiff puppy, before flowers are placed on the graves.
Said repairs usually entail reinscribing the names on the headstones and cleaning the decorative shells which mark out the graves, but maintenance work went beyond that this year.
The need for spaces for pet bullmastiffs Rose and Edd – either to bury their ashes or to build a memorial – was made apparent by Rose’s recent health scare. Space has been made by translating two of the coffins, those of fishes Daah and Flower, into the grave of goldfish Lovehearty II, reburying all three coffins inside a larger box.
The coffin of still-born puppy Alpha Primus and the already shared coffin of crab Rodney and goldfish Woo-Woo were also reburied, translated closer together so as to make room for future burials.
The Emperor stated that while it was “unfortunate that we had to actually move the coffins, this was done with the utmost respect. All the pets are now reburied, with their graves decorated by shiny shells and freshly picked flowers. Let us hope that the vacant space freed up shall not have to be used for a long time”.