Pet Care

Grieving for the loss of a Pet.

When the loss is sudden, as will be in the case of an accident, it can be many times harder to come to terms with and the healing process can take a long time. If our companion passes away because of old age, or old age related illnesses, we often have had at least some warning. He or she was not well before it happened and was probably undergoing veterinary treatment. Deep down inside we know that the time will come when we will have to decide that if our friends quality of life is so low that if he could ask us, he or she would ask to be released from his earthly body. Knowing when to make that final decision is one of the hardest tasks we as their guardians have to do. Of course, we would seek guidance from our vet, he will advise us to the best of his professional knowledge, but he does not have the unbreakable bond with our friend which we do. In a strange way, the signs are often there, but they vary so much from case to case and sometimes one is unwilling to see them.

It is often very hard to decide that your companion's life is no longer worth living. None of us want to make that very final decision, but as Pet owners we must be prepared to shoulder that possible last task if we are called upon to do so.

To help you understand how we decided the time had come for one of our beloved cats I will tell you about Trundles, who we lost very recently. Writing about him is painful to me, his loss is burned fresh into our souls and when I look at the bench in the kitchen where he used to sleep, my eyes are no longer dry.

Trundles was an ordinary street cat in a small West Cork town. He lived his life on the street and was fed by several people, we used to go into the supermarket and buy the little Whiskas sachets for him, and he loved those. We stood over him while he ate, to prevent the odd passing dog from stealing his meal. He was black with white feet and a white diamond on his chest. We wanted to take him home but already had many other rescued resident cats so we asked others to take him, but without success.

One day he went missing and was not seen for 10 days. We searched for him and my wife enquired of people if they had seen them. After about ten days when talking to yet another person, she was told that he had had a terrible accident and was left dying in the gutter a bit further up the road. A couple had taken him in and she should enquire at their place about what had happened. My wife called at the house and was left into the kitchen, there near the fire in a wooden create was Trundles. The state he was in was indescribable, in coma, paralysed and dying. They had not taken him to the vet; they did not believe in vets and anyway they had no money. They had tried to feed him but found it very hard.

So we managed to take him away and went to our vet straightaway. Trundles had major brain damage, was paralysed, blind in one eye, incontinent, had a massive ear mite infestation, which had destroyed the hearing in one ear, and could do nothing for himself. He was treated for his bleeding injuries and pumped full of antibiotics and vitamins. I think, although he did not say so, that the vet gave him less than a five percent chance to live. We intensive care nursed him for weeks on end and he went to the vet every single day, including the weekends for the first fourteen days. Our greatest problem was that he had forgotten how to eat, so we kept him alive by syringe feeding him on Fortol, a highly specialised liquid feed for cats that cannot eat themselves. We slept with him at night and for the first two weeks turned him every two hours to prevent bedsores from developing. Very gradually he started to improve a bit, but it was a hard fight every inch of the way, for him and for us. After one month we had his incontinence under control and his paralysis had almost gone. Getting him to eat was harder, that took three months of infinite patience but the day he licked his first bit of Fortol from a small saucer was the happiest day of our lives.