Mourning a Cat Who is Gone

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Mourning a cat takes a different shape from mourning a person.

Yet, with the cultural concept of “pet loss” only a few decades old, and with so few models to use from, many people are not always consciously aware of the similarities, and differences, between “person loss” and “pet loss.” This can interfere with our grief process.

There’s no question that we love our cats, and they love us back. This alone means we can’t help but use our human experience to handle our loss. In many ways, having a pet draws from many human experiences; we receive companionship, seek comfort from, and also nurture, our beloved cat.

Yet the society at large presents confusing messages about our emotions at such a time. The reactions swing from belittling our loss: It was only a cat!, to over-reaction based on human relationships: How can you even think about getting another cat? Didn’t you love Mr. Whiskers?

It’s no wonder people are confused about both their feelings and the proper response. Here are some guidelines that might help.

The length of the experience. If we had our cat for a long time, that is a different grief that the untimely death of a cat we had for only a few years.

A relationship of a decade or two means a great many milestones were stamped with our cat’s presence; an indelible part of our personal history. The emotions that are stirred up as we recall their endearing ways can make us conscious of how much of our own life is now in the past with them.

Yet a long and lovely life can also be its own reward. If our cat lived to a happy old age with us, we couldn’t have asked much more of them. This “sense of completeness” can remind us we certainly enjoyed them to the fullest.

A cat who dies while still too young can create a sense of anger over feeling cheated out of years we had anticipated enjoying. Grief can be sharper over unrealized potential. There can also be feelings of guilt; even if we took excellent care of our boy or girl, we could feel that we somehow should have done better, and then we could still have them.

Worse yet, perhaps we did make mistakes; we can cling to our grief to punish ourselves. But this is also pointless. If we had known that decision or delay would have such terrible consequences, we certainly would not have decided the way we did.

Either way, we must forgive ourselves for not controlling every possible outcome; this is a power that was never ours to control in the first place.

The intensity of the experience. There are cats who move through our life attuned to our emotions and thoughts. Losing such a cat not only puts a seeming hole in our heart, it can make us despair of having such a marvelous relationship again.

This can tinge our grief with an unwelcome whiff of selfishness. This can cause us to double down on our grief to drive the thought away. Just as people are individuals and can never be duplicated, we can never replace the cat we lost. We feel the loss all the more keenly when we are faced with the fact that this relationship, so rewarding, will not pass our way again.

Denial of this uncomfortable fact is the impulse which drives some people to pay $50,000 dollars for a cloned replica. As I explained in this post, even a genetically identical cat might have the same genes; but we can never duplicate those genes’ particular expression.

Others might take denial to a less scientific level by seeking out a cat who closely resembles the lost cat, even to the point of giving them the same name.

We can’t find that cat again. But we can find a different cat, a different relationship; that is also wonderful. Just… different.

If the thought makes us feel uncomfortable, even “disloyal,” we have come to the crux of pet bereavement.

The problem is not in us. The problem is that most of us live in societies which have no language, structure, or recognition of how closely we can bond with a pet.

Imagine a society which has a concept called “pet loss” and offers guidelines about when it’s “right” to get over it, when it’s “okay” to get on with it, and at the same time honors the depths of our feelings both while we love, and when we lose, our pet.

It sounds great! Unfortunately, we are not all the way there yet.

So we continue to show up at work as though nothing has happened, head for the restroom if we think of how we will be going home to an empty chair or hallway, and only confide our true feelings to those of our friends who feel about their pets the same way we do; and are struggling with similar feelings of conflict.

Our grief over pets must run its course; so we can get another. One reason we might cling to our grief, and not process it, is that we feel guilty when we feel it lessen. This is also true of both people and pets; the “pet loss” twist is that while we can love our cat very much, losing them does not have the same power to alter our life.

With pets, we ask them to shape their life around ours; their ability to do this is part of why pets are so appealing. When we lose a pet, it is profoundly hurtful, and we miss them. But we have not lost a shared income, advice on our love life, or the chance to see them graduate. People relationships have a much longer anticipated scope; with their loss we feel our entire life landscape shift under our feet.

Pets are different; it may not be fair that they don’t live as long as we do, but it is the reality. That is the shape of the relationship; that we experience their entire life during a fraction of our own.

While it is sad; it is also joyous. Because we can do it over and over again; in a way that is not possible with human relationships.

We are fortunate when we keep our parents, our friends, our life partners, and so many other relationships for such a long arc of time. But this is necessarily restrictive; it often represents a limited number of chances at having that kind of relationship at all.

After all, there are times when we move quickly after a loss. When a child is orphaned, we don’t decide to let them “get over” their loss before getting them new parents. We move them quickly into a new “parenting situation,” because they need support to get over it, at all.

That is the confusing thing about losing a pet we love very much; imposing a human template on our loss only distorts the enjoyment our cat gave us during their life. That was their purpose.

To make us enjoy the experience so much we can’t help but want to try it again.

We should resist well-meant urgings to get another if we still don’t feel like it; this can be the person’s way of trying to help, but it can make us feel that they are not acknowledging the specialness of our cat; this is not like getting another African Violet.

But we should also not berate ourselves if we find cravings for another cat popping up quite soon; even as our grief over the gone cat has not really diminished. We can feel both; missing the cat who is gone, and longing to love, and be loved, by a cat again.

It is the nature of cat relationships; to lead us into more cat relationships.

Over and over, people have expressed to me their grief over a recent cat loss, and then, finding a sympathetic ear, confiding that they have such a strong desire to get another cat. Is it wrong? they always ask me.

No, it’s not wrong at all. We can miss our cat for a long time; their pawprints need never leave our heart.

But what does that have to do with loving another cat? If we have many cats, we can love them all simultaneously; losing one doesn’t mean we stop loving the living.

The desire to embark on a New Cat Adventure is actually a natural response to loss. It is the assertion of our heart that we still have much to give. It is healthy to have room, in our homes and our hearts, to moderate our grief… by giving the gift of life.

Which is actually the most loving memorial we can build.

The toughest part of having a cat is deciding to say goodbye. Find help in my posts on coping with end of life issues.

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