This song is for my foster dog MoMA and for my dear friend and rescue buddy Carol and her beloved Kepler.
 
There were some lyrics I had begun finding myself singing a while before MoMA succumbed to lymphoma and pneumonia. For me , sometimes song is how the right side of my brain tells the logical left side what it sees in seeing the whole picture. In this case it was warning me that Mo didn't have long to live , which I logically knew because she had fallen out of remission and was no longer responding to 2 of her 4 chemo drugs, but emotionally I wasn't yet ready to accept this..When she got a very bad pneumonia , suffering badly and unlikely to recover, with her lyphoma ready to kill her soon anyway, the decision was inescapable.
I found myself singing to the tune of "No Expectations" (a Rolling Stones classic from abut 50 or 40 years ago). "take me to the vet school, let me leave my pain, I've got no expectations to pass through here again" was the first iteration.. Then it became "I've got no expectations good living to regain" . But and then after Mo's death and after Kepler's death, it became "I've got good expectations to incarnate again". The singing Bouvier had become a Buddist or maybe a Pythagorean.
 
In his day Pythagoras was probably better known as philosopher than as mathematician/geometer, and his philosophy included reincarnation, with possibilities of transformation from animal to human and vice versa. He was known to have chastised someone he saw beating a dog , saying that dog had previously lived as a good friend of his. .
There's some similarity between the Buddist concept of the karma of one's current life and previous ones affecting one's condition in the ensuing life and the Pythagorean concept that the soul meets with the gods or judges to determine what lessons, challenges, and oppetunities to repay benefactors should be potentiated by the next life.. In both cases , one normally has no memory of previous lives, though Pythagoreas thought that some individuals (including himself, ocourse) were gifted with "the Sight" to occasionally glimpse a past life.
A charming episode of Pythagoras explaining his theories of reincarnation can be found in Mary Rnault's novel "The Praise Singer" For a modern take on the concepts of reincarnation and of life lessons, I'd commend the film "Defending Your Life"
 
After Kepler's death, Carol wrote to the Bouvier e-list " It breaks my heart to tell you all that my dear Kepler had to be released to the Bridge today. He could no longer swallow is food or medicine without pain and cried during the night. We were very fortunate to have him survive his brain tumor for as long as he did..I gave permission for a necropsy in hopes that it might help other dogs. Every one of you knows how awful it is to lose a dear Bouvier pal. Kepler is my 7th to succumb to cancer of some sort. My daughter Rosie is crushed. Thank you all for thinking of us in this difficult time."
(note : Kepler survived, mostly with good quality of life, for a year and a half after diagnosis and prediction that he would be gone within a month or two. His long term survival and good quality of life was possible because of Carol's diligent and loving care.)