A compassionate conversation about losing a beloved cat, making end-of-life choices, and finding hope after pet loss.
I’ve looked at grief from both sides now and still somehow; I really don’t know grief at all.
The thing about grief is, you can’t really plan for it, and every loss is different. I have lost cats in the blink of an eye, where we woke up that day and everybody was fine, and they didn’t go to sleep with me that night. I have had animals that I knew were going to die, like Elvis who had FIP that was terminal. He hung on for six months to a year longer than he was supposed to. We enjoyed that time.
Just because something happens with one cat doesn’t mean it’s going to happen that way with another. In fact, usually it doesn’t. It happens in the opposite way. The best you can do is stay present in the moment and not project fear.
Try not to project fears, guilt, or anything else on the situation. Just being present in the moment with love is the best thing to do. What I do is I ask for the angels to make sure that I have all the information I need to make the best choices I can. I try to make sure that everything within the relationship I have with that cat is understood and decided. That way, I’m not holding on to them either.
I’ve seen cats stay earthbound because their owner doesn’t want to let go of them, but they had to drop their physical body. I’ve seen them stay at the Rainbow Bridge and not go to heaven because they’re waiting for their owners to die so they can cross together. I let go as much as I possibly can and try to make it about the fact that I know I will see that animal again. Our relationship has not died. It has just transformed, and the love that we had did not die. I know this is hard when you’re in it, but when you get some distance from it, it’s the right thing to do. You can’t prepare for anybody’s death, other than to be present and make the best decisions you can at the time.
How Do You Prepare for the Loss of a Beloved Cat?
When your cat gets sick, you will have to make some decisions. The best thing is to decide whether you want to do an expensive surgery, or you want to do chemotherapy if your animal gets cancer. Then you have some guidelines about what you will tolerate, and you can be more present with your animal. The situation that you’re dealing with your cat may be different than what you planned for and that’s okay. It is easier to make adjustments than come up with an entire plan.
Making decisions separates you from being present with your animals while they’re going through the illness so I try to make as many of those decisions as I can beforehand. Currently over 30% of cats die of cancer, so that is a real possibility. CANCER is a big word. Make it smaller by asking what TYPE of Cancer and WHAT STAGE. Some cancers are 90% curable. There are 4 stages of cancer. Stage 1 & 2 means just a tumor (2 is a larger tumor), no migration to the lymph nodes (They may take out a few to make sure). Stage 3 is lymph node involvement, and it has migrated to other places in the body, and stage 4 means it has migrated several places. Many types of cancer, a stage will take six months to develop.
So, when I hear about cancer, I take a deep breath and ask what type of cancer. Then I ask what stage. Usually stages 1 and 2 are treatable and survivable. When you get to stage 3 and stage 4- that is when I would really wonder about treating. Also, you need to find out what your pet wants to do. How much pain are they in? Are they eating? The first sign I always see with cancer is losing weight and not eating. If a cat is doing this it could be cancer or a kidney issue. Be aware. “
Marc Maron said: Do you KNOW how much I love my cats? Every cat I have, I am going to have to watch them die and or choose end-of-life for them, and that’s the best possible scenario.”
I will probably outlive my cats and will have to make those decisions for them. I also know if I’ve decided beforehand what I really want out of that relationship, it will be easier for me to be present with them.
I had a situation where I had a horse break its leg, and there’s no cure for that. I had just read an article about it, so I knew I had humanely put her down. The angels (this was before I was psychic) somehow gave me the grace to have seen an article on broken legs and prosthetics beforehand, so I knew what I was dealing with.
Because everything in your stubborn little heart says keep them alive, no matter what the cost is. But that isn’t always the best solution. It may be more freeing, less painful, less expensive to let them go. They might WANT TO GO. Make sure you honor the wishes of your cat. This is a very good time to call in an animal communicator. Find out what they want, how they feel. If they want to try to stay, are they excited about staying? Some stay just because they know you want them to, and that isn’t good enough reason. Remember, they can go up to heaven, take a break, upgrade to a new model body and be back within a year!
How Do You Prepare for the Loss of a Beloved Cat?
Really, decide how much you will spend on cancer treatment, what stage you will treat, how look at the prognoses of the cancer your cat has. I’ve had several clients spend forty thousand dollars on treating cancer in cats, and halfway through the chemo, the cat is like hiding from them because they don’t want to do it anymore. And when I talked to the cat, the cat was like, “I said yes to this, but I didn’t know what yes meant. I didn’t know I would feel this horrible.”
Another factor. You may explain it to your animal about their preferences, but they might not understand what they’re saying yes to. Just like anybody that loves you, they want to please you, and so they’re probably tell you what you want to hear (I had a dog tell me one time: “I don’t want any extenuating circumstances, but I don’t know what that statement means.” He had apparently heard his mom say it to someone else on the phone!). Treating cancer in a cat has many parameters, age of the cat, strength, other health, whether they are a fighter, what the cat’s wishes are, type of cancer, stage of cancer, where you do surgery, chemo, or radiation. Don’t automatically decide to freak out about CANCER! Until you know these things.
Decide about health treatment. Then check in with your animal and yourself and see if that decision is still the best possible one in a week, a month. Because we’re always growing, we’re always learning, and we have different situations. There have been times in my life where I could take care of a cat that was ill, and other times when I couldn’t, because it hurt too much or the care was too extensive. Be easy with yourself. Know that this is the situation that your cat came into as a soul and they knew it before they signed up for this life. They came here to learn from their death and from their life with you, this illness might be what it’s about them learning from the illness and death.
Maybe to die in a different way, or they’re bringing up, I had this feral cat, Benny, who made a conscious decision to be loved by humans, and he came in and lived with me and was loved by me, and it wasn’t that I tamed him; it was that he decided he wanted to experience what that was like, and he allowed me to share his life. They are animals that have sentience and have opinions and feelings, just like we do. And there’s a lot of stuff going on the internet right now about cats being very spiritual beings, and they are. Cats tell me they can’t, like, living and dying is like walking from the kitchen to the living room. They don’t lose consciousness. I talk to my cat Buffy, and she knows more about that past life her and I spent together when I was ten than I do. She remembers it more clearly.
How Do You Know When It’s Time to Let a Sick Cat Go?
Even though she’s in a new body, and so just because they can’t talk to you verbally aloud doesn’t mean that they don’t have sentience, that they don’t have a purpose, and they don’t have desires and ideas about how they want their life to go. And I take all that into consideration: what their wishes are, what I’m capable of. What I financially can do, and what I am supposed to be learning from this experience with the two of us, or with the family unit of cats as a whole. So, I don’t know if that helps you with your grief, but the more you deal with different cases of animals passing, the more experience you have, the deeper your knowledge of it is.
And there’s a quote from Beatrice Woods: “My heartbroken laughter fell out.” I always thought that was such an utterly crazy quote. But our default is pure joy. That is what our soul is, and somewhere we know that we will be with these animals again, and that pure joy will be there. And the sorrow and the grief are losing them now in this lifetime in this mortal body. And I’ve come to realize a lot of times with my grief, it’s more about me because I miss them, and I want them to share my life longer than they have. But when I talk to that animal in heaven, they’re happy, they’re out of pain, they’re preparing to come back to you in a new body. In the right time.
Quite a dichotomy for me when I talk to animals that are in heaven, and their human that’s crying and upset with losing them, because we’re the ones suffering the loss, and they’re the ones that got back, got to go back home. And that connection of love is not broken. But what happens is when we get grief, that energy sits around us like a fog, and we cannot feel the joy of heaven. The joy of the love that we are still connected with, and that that happens to me too. I usually can’t get a hold of an animal right after they died because, not because they’re not available, but because my grief on it is so heavy. And I’m talking about my own animals. I can get a hold of somebody else’s animals easy, but my own animals I can’t because I’m in the grief and it’s a lower vibration and.
We came here to experience emotions and feel emotions and know what they were like. And there’s, I don’t know what the saying is, but however, if you hold off feeling your emotions, if you hold off on the depth of your sadness, you’re also holding off on your ability to feel the vastness and height of your joy. And so, I hope that. I wish that for you, that you experience the loss of your pets as a journey that is a temporary loss, and find out more about being human and having relationships with sentient beings.
Grieving the loss of a beloved cat or other companion animal is never easy, but the love we shared with them deserves to be honored and remembered. A thoughtful pet sympathy gift or pet memorial gift can provide comfort during pet bereavement and serve as a lasting reminder of a cherished life. At Pet Perennials, we believe that the bond between people and their pets continues even after physical loss. Our thoughtfully chosen sympathy gifts for pet loss are designed to help families honor their animals, celebrate the memories they shared, and keep that enduring love close to heart and home.
