Grief was a continuous experience that hit my family last year.
It’s something that I’ve experienced before, but some hit harder than others.
Especially the death of my brother’s cat, George.
He was a consistent staple of our home.
Everyone around us knew who he was, and they loved his visits. He was this loud orange cat, who was surprisingly smart for what it was worth.
The days leading up to the choice of putting him down were the hardest.
He was so full of life, screaming at us like always and playing, but you could see the decline. He knew something was up when we were all sad and crying.
He still tried to comfort us the way he always did, not knowing it was for him.
Pets are common in many households. As of 2022, a study by the Canadian Animal Health Institute found that about 60 per cent of households in the country have a pet.
Some see these pets as important as children, while others keep them around for company.
Both of those were the case with George. We had taken George in around 2017, and he travelled to Calgary with us in 2019, right before the pandemic. He was always there — a talkative and fluffy goofball.
Last December, we had to put him to rest as he was getting too sick for us to take care of with our limited amount of funds.
As many pet owners are when they lose their pets, we were heartbroken and still are suffering the effects of that choice now.
Soul pets and grieving
Another research study done in 2022 by the National Library of Medicine talks about how humans can experience similar amounts of grief from the death of a pet companion to that of a human companion. This is because of the bond formed between the two.
Humans take care of their pets, much as they would a dependent. The pet brings them joy and trouble, just as a child would.
Courtney MacKay, a grief counsellor at Canniff & Associates in Whitecourt, Alta., has helped people through the loss of a pet and has seen how it impacts one’s mental and even physical health.
MacKay says some pets are what some call soul pets.
“That’s something that they kind of continually come back and reference, even long after we’ve done a lot of the grief processing, that they’ll be like, nope, that was my soul pet,” says McKay. ”They’re still connected to them.”
Soul pets are a person’s soulmate in pet form, and the deaths of these types of pets might hit a person harder because of the deep connection.
In general, pets have an odd way of finding their humans. George found my brother, and they were inseparable.
Even in his decline, he still remembered my brother and would go to comfort him until the end.
As many people consider their pets to be a dependent or their child, there are those who are advocating for pet owners to be able to use bereavement pay to allow them time to mourn the loss of their pet.
The guilt of putting a pet down
The impact that a pet can have on you is heartbreaking when you have to watch them decline or even have to make the choice for them. Many people push too far — wanting their pet to live with them as long as possible — but there comes a point when you need to let them go.
“They can’t tell you when it’s time,” says Teresa Calia.
Calia works as a veterinary technician at a local animal hospital, and she sees it every day when people push too far.
Calia herself even experienced this with her own dog, Blackjack, who was put down due to heart failure. She was so used to ‘fixing’ the problem that when it came time for BlackJack to be put down, she was filled with guilt over her choice.
With George, my brother made the choice.
Neither of us was financially stable enough to get him the medicine he would need. He had already suffered twice from urinary tract infections, and he was showing signs of arthritis and dementia. My brother feels the guilt of this action every day since George passed.
Moving on through grief
Calia also talked about how one day she woke up and knew things were going to be OK. That she knew it was time to continue on, and that it didn’t hurt as much to talk about BlackJack.
My brother and family held a funeral for George back in the spring to honour him, and they also kept a shrine on my brother’s bookshelf with George’s tag and whiskers.
Everyone honours their pets differently: some get paw-print tattoos, keep urns of their ashes, or sometimes even have taxidermy of their beloved pets. Others get new companions right away to fill the holes left by their pets.
Things don’t have to get easier, and grief is something that takes time, especially when it is impactful. It’s a process, and we all experience it differently, whether it’s a human or a pet companion.