by Peggy Haymes
How to heal from the loss of a cat
by Peggy Haymes
© 2012 by Peggy Haymes. All Rights Reserved.
Let’s face it. Cats get a bad rap. I’ve heard the stories, the snide remarks, haven’t you? Dogs have owners; cats have staff. Or this: Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.
Friends and sometimes even family wonder how we can love an animal so deeply who seems so aloof, pets who believe themselves so superior to us. I was away from home for several weeks following an accident. When I returned home, my dog was beside herself with wild, ecstatic joy. One of my cats (Maxie) walked into the room where I was, very deliberately turned her back to me, sat down for a moment facing away from me, then slowly and deliberately walked down the hall. I’m no expert in animal communication but I think she wasn’t happy about my absence. That’s a cat for you.
But that’s part of why we love them. Cats ask of us - actually demand of us - that we meet them on their terms. You kind of have to admire that, especially in a being so much smaller than we are. We love them because we know that they’re complex. Yes, they may be demanding and punishing and haughty. But they are also loving and affectionate and playful. The same cat who punished me for being away also slept every night with her head on my pillow. We love them because there is no more relaxing sound than a purring cat.
We love them. And that’s why we miss them so much when they’re gone.
Why are you so upset? It was just a cat.
Maybe someone say that to you, implying that you’re being silly or less than mentally healthy. Or maybe they didn't say it with words but they implied it with a look. Or when you tell them that your cat has died, they just say "Oh? Are you going to get another one?" And then they go on to talk about last weekend's game or their kid's loose tooth.
Or maybe you've said it to yourself.
Stop being so silly. I shouldn't feel this way. It wasn't like I lost a member of the family. (Well actually you did, but more about that later.) As a counselor, I've found it seldom helpful to talk about what we should or shouldn't be feeling. We feel what we feel and we may have no choice about that lump that comes up in our throats. We do have a choice as to what to do with those feelings. Telling yourself not to be sad is about as effective as telling a wave not to crash onto the beach.
So let's look at some of the reasons why losing a pet can be so difficult.
Grief is grief is grief
First of all, it's a loss. Yes, I am not expecting a Nobel Prize for that bit of insight. But sometimes we get locked into thinking that grief only looks one way. Grief only shows up when we have lost a (human) loved one. But any kind of loss can bring with it grief... the loss of a marriage or relationship. The loss of a job. The loss of a dream. The loss of the happy and safe childhood that you never got to have.
Grief is like a bright yellow marker. It highlights the empty space in our hearts. It honors the importance of what we have lost, how much it mattered in our lives.
Like the way our cats matter to us.
Unconditional love
The love we receive from a cat isn’t going to look the same as dog owners experiences from their pets. The unconditional love of a dog comes at you full force, front and center. Cats slip in through the side door. Just when you thought they were never going to talk to you again, they’re there, rubbing their heads under your chin...vibrating with the rumble of a deep purr. Sometimes a cat will pick a favorite family member and be quite shameless with their affections, shunning every other member of the family.
Cats also teach us about forgiveness and acceptance. They let us know that we have committed the unpardonable sin of a) being gone; b) buying the cheap cat food; c) not organizing the household to accommodate their every wish; of d) all of the above.... but they will love us anyway. Cats are great for helping us deal with issues of perfectionism. They let us know that we’re really not perfect. And in the end, it doesn’t matter.
Caring
Cats are wonderfully intuitive and part of that love that they offer us is a deep caring about us. When we are upset or sad, they don’t tell us to stop being silly or to get over it. They don't tell us what we should be feeling. They just care about us. We can tell them our secrets and they will keep them safe.
Cats don't care if our eyes swell up and our face gets all red and blotchy when we cry. Cats will listen for as many times as we need to talk about it without ever saying, "Enough about you - what about me?" My best childhood buddy was a black and white cat named Kitty. (Yes, I know - terribly original.) Through every up and down of adolescence, Kitty was right there. I could cry to her. I could talk to her and she’d never, ever tell me I was being silly. She just let stroke her, which of course, is great soothing medicine.
Now in the role of...
In addition to being live in therapists, cats play many different roles in our lives. Our cats may also be in our lives as entertainers. I am fairly certain that a significant portion of YouTube is taken up by cats doing funny things. Chasing after something. Attacking the unsuspecting passer-by.
I know of more than one cat who has taken on the job of gathering socks in the night, bringing them to their owner's bed. Writer Anne Lamott referred to her cat as a union cat because he faithfully worked his job every night.
Kittens are instant smile generators. I was in the veterinarian’s one day when they had a crate with three rescue kitten in the lobby. Every person who came through the door, child and adult alike, wound up at the crate, oohing and aahing and smiling at the playful bundles of fur. Cats are four-legged spa treatments. They knead our muscles, giving a gentle cat massage. This morning I looked beside me as I wrote. Little Bit was fast asleep, curled up with her head tucked under a paw. Just watching her sleep I could feel stress decrease.
For many of us, our cats are our children. By circumstance or by choice we do not have two legged children and so we adopt four legged ones, accepting the responsibility of raising them and caring for them. Cats adapt themselves to our sometimes too busy lives. We can leave them for a weekend, as long as there’s plenty of food, water and litter. They don’t require a lot of us all the while giving so much back in return.
Our cats can also be our teachers. At the end of this booklet you’ll find a blog that I wrote when my cat Rosie died. Maxie and Rosie were sisters. Maxie was my sweet curmudgeon, the mouth of a sailor wedded to a heart of gold. Rosie was my laid back, let it all roll off of her cat. Whatever change we encountered or I forced upon them, she took it in stride. Rosie taught me about being flexible and accepting what is.
Both Maxie and Rosie had been abandoned as tiny, barely born kittens. So young, their eyes were not yet opened when they were found. Rescued and cared for until they were old enough to be adopted, they loved greatly in spite of their beginnings.
Part of the routine
Sometimes people will feel ashamed because they are more distraught over the death of their cat than they were when their aunt died. Surely, they think, I must be a horrible person.
Not necessarily.
You may or may not have seen that aunt recently. Maybe you only saw her once or twice a year.
On the other hand, our cats are an integral part of our days. Feeding them. Playing with them. Having them snuggle up to us when we watch TV or as we sleep. When my cat Sam died, one of the unexpected challenges I had to deal with was oversleeping. For several mornings in a row I had to dash to make it to work on time. I was so used to Rosie waking me up with a tap on the cheek that I’d learned to tune out the alarm.
If your cat had some kind of special need or health challenge, this can be even more of a factor. You’re use
d to daily tasks of giving medicine, regular veterinary visits or even having to clean up after a sick cat. It wasn’t always pleasant but you’re used to it. All of a sudden you no longer have those responsibilities and their absence can make your days feel a little lopsided. Rosie was a diabetic for the last few years of her life and I grew quite used to the twice daily routine of insulin shots. For the first week or so after her death it felt very strange to me not to have this routine.
Symbolic Loss
We grieve the loss of our cats not only for who they were but also for whet they symbolize in our lives. A guy is devastated by the death of his cat because it was his last living tie to his wife. It was her cat and with the death, it feels like that last piece of her is gone.
Or the woman got her cat when she first went out on her own. The cat saw her through the formation and break-up of relationships, through moves from one job to another, through evolution of friendships, through the finding of a new and lasting love. Now married, the loss of her cat is the loss of her buddy who went through so many life changes with her, her last tie to her single, younger days.
Some months after the death of my mom, my father accidentally let the cat out and she disappeared. I was frantic to find the cat, looking for her day after day. The thoughts of losing her felt like losing one more piece of my mom. (Thankfully, she showed up at a neighbor’s house a few months later.)
Decisions about medical care and euthanasia
Sometimes an old cat will just lie down and not get up. But often we have to make medical decisions for them. You may feel guilty because you did not have the money to pursue all options available. Or maybe you just came to a point of saying “enough is enough” and made the decision that it was time for euthanasia.
These can be gut-wrenching decisions. Even when you absolutely know it’s the right thing to do it can feel like a terrible thing. Your pet is looking up at your with eyes full of love and trust. Or on the day the euthanasia is scheduled your cat seems to be a little bit better. Should you go through with it? Should you extend their lives? Or are you extending their suffering?
Part of the difficulty with pets is that they cannot use words to tell us, I’m ready to go.” Or, “I don’t mind the pain, really. Just let me hang out with you a while longer.” We don’t know their wishes. So we have to make the best decisions that we can based on all of the information we are given.
There are no cut and dried, right and wrong answers. And even if there were, it would still be gut-wrenching. After the cat is gone, they can also be a fertile field for guilt. Should I have done more? Should I have been willing to sacrifice more? Did I keep them too long, past the point of dignity and their desire for life?
We do the best we can with all of the information we have. The reality is that sometimes financial limits are real limits. Sometimes we cannot invest the time and energy to drive to the vet school halfway across the state for experimental treatments. If there was any way we could and keep our job, we would. But there isn’t.
Likewise, sometimes we simply have to get to the point of being able to do what we know we need to do. It is a great gift to be able to put an animal out of its suffering but it can also be a great burden.
So remember two things. First of all, the decisions that we have to make at the end of a cat’s life does not negate all of the love and care we have extended through that cat’s life.
(And, if you need a reminder: making a decision for euthanasia may be the most loving gift you can give to a cat.)
If there was something to learn from the loss, then allow yourself to embrace the lessons. Perhaps you learned a sad lesson that a cat can really get through that small space at the bottom of your fence. Or you learned that you needed not to ignore symptoms. Or maybe you just learned that when you love a cat and a cat loves you back, their absence leaves a much larger hole than you’d ever imagined possible. Whatever the lesson, allow yourself to take it and leave the guilt behind. When we are able to learn our lessons give meaning to whatever happened. It is not simply a bad thing. It is a bad thing that becomes the ground for better things.
Would you have given your right arm not to have had to learn that lesson? Of course. But part of the task of grief is learning to let go of that over which we have no control; namely, the fact that our beloved cats are no longer with us.
A word about words
You’ll notice that I’ve been using the fifty-cent word, euthanize, instead of the more common language of putting a cat to sleep. If you have children in your life, be careful about not using the phrase “putting Snuffy to sleep.” Children are concrete thinkers and when they learn what happens when their pets are put to sleep, they are terrified to sleep themselves.
My cat disappeared
Is your cat gone? Or not gone? You don’t know where they are. They didn’t come when you called. The uncertainty makes the grief for a lost cat particularly hard. First of all, do you grieve or not? Will you ever see your cat again? You just don’t know.
You also don’t know what’s happened to the cat. At such a time, your imagination can be your worst enemy as you try to imagine where your cat is and how they are faring.
Here’s some hints for navigating such a time:
Whatever your spiritual background, make use of it. Lift your cat in prayer, surround with light, etc.
Inasmuch as possible, avoid creative writing. That is, don’t let your imagination run wild with all of the possible and terrible things that might be happening. If you find yourself doing that, remind yourself that this doesn’t help your cat in any way. Then return to step number one.
Listen to your own spirit as far as how you need to grieve. You can grieve missing your cat’s presence right now without giving up hope that your cat will be found. At the same time, you can let go of that hope and grieve a forever loss. If you do that, it doesn’t mean that you can’t welcome your cat home with joyful arms if they somehow show up later. Listen to your own heart as to what you need to do.
A link of grief
You may be surprised by the volume of grief that you feel. Even with all of these perfectly good reasons for grieving the death of your cat, it still feels like there’s something more. And there may very well be.
While we tend to think of the losses in our lives as separate segments, in reality they are like links in a chain. A present day loss may open ourselves to layers of grief about a loss in our past.
Maybe it was a loss you really didn’t have the opportunity and support for grieving. For example, there was a time when people thought children didn’t need to grieve. Adults tried to shield children from the loss and act as if it hadn’t happened. I know of adults who lost parents as children and no one ever really talked with them about that loss and their feelings.
Un-grieved grief doesn’t go away; it just lies dormant. A contemporary loss may open the door to that old grief so that you are feeling the not only present feelings but also for all of those other losses.
You may be thinking, “But I thought I’d grieved!” Grief is like those biscuits that have lots of flaky layers. You pull one off.. and there’s another one.. and another one... and another one. The layers don’t look the same. They’re not of the same intensity or duration. Your present loss may tap into another layer from an old grief.
It doesn’t mean that once you experience loss you always have to carry that grief around like a heavy backpack on your shoulders. It does mean that grief manifests in different ways at different times. For example, you may have grieved the loss of your mom when you were a young woman. But now that you’re moving into the heart of your career you wish she was here to talk with about how to balance work and family and home and self. Or you may have deeply grieved the loss of your father. But when your first child is born you miss not having him there to talk with about being a dad. The loss of a cat may open up one of those pockets of grief.
While there are certain common elements of grief, your experience will be unique
to you. Some of the common hallmarks of grief are:
finding it hard to focus
sadness and/or crying
irritability/impatience
anger
depressed energy or mood
unpredictability - swinging from one mood to another
changes in sleep/eating patterns
numb
angry
tired
You may find yourself expecting to be greeted by your cat when you come home. In the middle of the night you may think that you’ve heard the jingle of their collar.
An important note
Sometimes grief can be overwhelming. If you find that you are having trouble functioning or if you’ve been trying to work through your grief for a prolonged period and have had no change, it’s time to see a counselor. Look for a counselor who specializes in grief and loss. Many hospices offer counseling even if they have not cared for your loved one.
Occasionally the grief can feel more than overwhelming. You may be in a difficult time in your life and your cat was the one connection that gave you hope and a reason to hang around. Or it may feel like just the last straw in a time in which too many burdens have been on your back. You may feel like you have lost the only being who truly loved you and cared for you and you wonder if there’s any reason to go on.
If you feel that way please get help immediately. Call a counselor. Contact your local hospice. Reach out to your minister. Call a suicide hotline. Keep breathing and putting one foot in front of the other until you can get help.
Tools for Healing
One of the best tools for healing is writing. Writing provides a challenge through which your grief can flow. It doesn’t make it go away but something happens. Being able to write about something is one way of beginning to move through it. It’s as if our brains say, “Now that it’s written down, I don’t have to carry it front and center any more.”
