When you Lose a Pet

Unless you are over 90, or going for a tortoise, you will outlive your pet. That’s OK though, children learn about the natural cycle of life, and all of us get the fun of choosing a replacement, after a respectful gap.

Until you get a special, irreplaceable soul. And that is a whole new ball game.

Normal Pet Deaths

Pets give you purpose. It is nice to care for a being that isn’t too demanding.  No offence to babies, but pets are more fun.

You get: Laughs when they do something stupid. Attacking a sock in a sideways stance (cats), fighting over a rubber band (chickens). Family unity in shared outrage when they are Bad and steal entire birthday cakes (dogs) or a sandwich from your hand (chickens). And adoration that borders on blackmail (dogs, not chickens or cats).

Whatever the pet, from pony to stick insect, you have an antidote to loneliness, a reason to be and a death to go through. Each death brings a lesson. Here some of mine.

The Rabbit

Age 7.  Brand new rabbit and tiny hutch. We set to work my friend and I.  By the end of the day the poor imprisoned rabbit had a spectacular 20ft run made of cardboard boxes, paper, string and tape.  We left him to enjoy the right to roam with the family greyhound standing by.

This was a hard lesson about the strength of cardboard, predators and rabbit rights v greyhound rights.  I tried to cry over that rabbit but did not really get a chance to know it so the lesson was not as hard as I like to make out.

The Dachshund

Age 11. I inherited a dachshund and my first taste of unrequited dog love. I had my own personal yappy little ball chasing lap shadow.  All good. Until I went out with friends and did not notice her crossing the road to catch up me up.

That was worse than the rabbit but I learnt a healthy respect for traffic, moved on and headed dog-free into teenage life.

The Hamster

Age 30 something.  Parents of small children often fall into the hamster trap. 

Children get something bland and furry. Parents get a cage to clean.

One bad day we came back from holiday to be told that the ‘hamster is not moving, presumed dead’ by the hamster sitters. The children had a go at crocodile tears and I set about removing the body.

The furry lump turned out to be an mouldy cob of sweetcorn, and the real hamster was long gone.

When a pet dies, check it is actually dead and hasn’t just moved to live a long happy life behind a cupboard.  I found the nest and a small skeleton three years later when I moved the cupboard. 

And so it went on, each decade brought a new friend and family members. Some had their own death wishes. The terrier who liked to bite fireworks just as you lit them, the Labrador that ate herself into an early grave, and cats who didn’t understand that only chickens must cross main roads.  Happy days, sad endings, move on, get a new one, until:

Age 60’s.  Old enough to know Better. The Big One.

2018. Feeling a bit needy? What to do? Get a kitten. So we did.

She marched into our lives, attacked everything that moved, formed a different, close bond with each member of the household and took on every characteristic of extreme intelligence and wit that that we assigned to her. We adored and tracked her every move for 6 years and then she went and died, suddenly and expensively on the operating table after a checkup for a furball.

One minute there is a person living in your house who knows exactly when one person needs some fluffy pressure on the side of their leg, or when somebody else needs to admire how you get stuck up a tree when they meant to weed the garden.  A person who can trigger multiple conversations a day about what they did with the new toy, how sweet it was that they licked the other cat on the head, how marvellous her black eyeliner blends into the stripes around her eyes.

Someone who can fell you with a steady stare, who carries your soul behind those eyes and who wipes away any problems or regrets from the past by dragging you into the present by with the gift of a dead fly or a live moth, never a bird, she was too perfect. And then she was gone.

What do you learn from this one? 

You Can’t make an Announcement

You might want to put something in the local paper, the village newsletter or the Times even. But there isn’t a column for cats.

Nobody Understands

Humans get a big gathering of sad people when they die. Most pets have not bothered making friends with more than two or three people in their lives so they can’t expect giant funerals. As chief mourner this is not going to be like your last family funeral when you got endless cards and flowers and visits from all sorts of people clambering to be up there with you. 

Best you can expect from friends is a long story from them about how sad they were when their own pet died. As if their pet was anywhere near as good as yours was.

Somebody will Understand

Some people get it. Like the person who said ‘It is sad when you lose a grandfather or something but it is not as if your grandfather was all furry and soft and sat on your lap every night for 10 years.’  That is exactly it.

It gets out of Proportion

Something is out of kilter if you can listen to terrible world news in the morning and still set out for your day with a smile on your face, until you go past the vet and get teary just looking at the carpark.

Routines are Different

It is not the same:

Cleaning your teeth without somebody asking to sit on the sink and play with the tap

Making the bed without a demon stalker flying across and attacking every pillow and sheet as it goes down.

Chucking a throw onto a sofa and realising you don’t have to make it into a tent so that somebody can lie inside the tent for three hours until they get sat on by mistake.

Opening a delivery box without help.

Nobody there to do the dance of the seven veils to celebrate the excitement of a new Thing.

You have to Plant something Expensive

You dig a grave, trying to remember where all the other pets are buried so you don’t dig one up by mistake. The only way to keep that spot alive is plant something on top.

So off to the garden centre ‘money is no object’ and wander a sea of plants and bushes realising 1. None of them will bring your pet back. 2. You don’t often buy plants so you have no idea what to buy.

So you just pick the most expensive one. This is a Hibiscus and they don’t come cheap. But it is nice to have something unusual.

Later on you look nearby and realise you already have one.

An old Hibiscus lurking in the corner, choking under bindweed. It is likely there is another pet underneath it but I can’t remember who it was.

You can’t help Thinking about Kittens

So now there is a cat shaped hole in the house, do we get another? ‘Not yet’ we say respectfully. Sometimes I watch videos of kittens being ridiculous, or check Cat Ads to see who has been born nearby.  This has to be done in secret as the grave is still fresh and she would know.

There is still one cat left. For the last few weeks she has been positively gleeful. Bouncing around the house, leaping onto my lap at any chance, trying hard to show some personality when she actually doesn’t have much. Is she lonely? Does she need a new friend? Ask Google.

Do cats grieve?  No.

Do old cats want a new kitten?  Definitely not.  Especially if they are quite old.  It will stress them out and ruin their last few years.

Looks like we are doomed to a few years with just the remaining, normal and (lets face it) more boring cat.   

I did some gardening today.  It is the time of year for chopping things down and make huge piles. 

At least the chicken tried to help.

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