Sir Arthur C Clarke

Arthur C Clarke
& Pets

Clarke explores the sky with Rikky

Arthur C Clarke was a lifelong animal lover – and also a supporter of animal welfare activities.

“I was lucky enough to be brought up on a farm, and I am sorry for any child who knows nothing but the concrete jungle of the city,” he once wrote.

In addition to the usual farm animals like sheep, cows and horses, the Clarke family’s Ballifants farm was teeming with dogs, which mother Nora raised professionally. In a 1969 interview, Clarke recalled that at one point they had 14 puppies in the house, which surged back and forth in waves between the rooms. “We were drowning in a sea of them.”

Clarke household in Colombo, Sri Lanka – where he lived from 1956 – always had an assortment of pets: mainly dogs and cats, but sometimes birds and monkeys. As he wrote in 2001: “All my life I have been surrounded by animals…and my garden contains the graves of a Rhodesian ridgeback, four beloved German shepherds, and two little monkeys – all badly missed.”

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth – learning and loving. Nothing else – not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake – can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy. ”

― Arthur C Clarke, in Rama II

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In my life I have found two things of priceless worth – learning and loving. Nothing else – not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake – can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy. ”

― Arthur C Clarke, in Rama II

His beloved Chihuahua Pepsi was the last in that line. “After a succession of sadly-missed Shepherds and Ridgebacks, I never imagined that I would lose my heart to so tiny a canine person,” he told friends in 2003.

When Pepsi died in 2004, Clarke (then aged 87) decided not to have any more dogs. “I have cried at too many graves of my beloved pets,” he said. “But I reserve the hugging rights for all my friends’ canine companions!”

On another occasion he wrote: “During the next century, with the development of robots and even more highly advanced forms of artificial intelligence, we will find ourselves sharing this planet with a new class of sentient beings. It will be an interesting challenge to see if we can coexist with them as successfully as we have done with their animal counterparts.”

Pepsi, the last of a long line of canine friends