The Death of a Pet

[Seafaring]

Last year around this time, my beloved Cat, Thunderpaws, was taken away from myself and my family. The reason why I post this, is because even though it happened a little over a year ago it still hurts extremely bad. One of the reasons is, is that I myself have never really expierenced death. None of my family, or my relatives have died since I have been alive. So actually seeing and feeling something that is lifeless, that was once so happy and free, was something completely new to me. The second reason why it hurt so much was because he died in our back yard. A place in which he should have been safe, from any outside danger. I often blame myself. We found him in our backyard, he had two bite marks on his side. The reason why I blame myself is because I was the one to little him out. Just before I let him out I held him for the last time. He was so content and happy in my arms, and he was warm and full of life. I urged him to leave me, because at the time I thought I had something better to do. I often feel that if I waited for just five more minutes he would still be with us. Another reason why it hurt so much, was because there isn't really a time I could remember in which he wasn't alive. I know he lived a good and rather long life, but just knowing that he could have lived longer, pains me so. I know I've mentioned this before, but he was in his yard, a place where he should have been safe. He never left our yard. Never! And the fact that a neighbors dog came into our yard and killed him, and just left him there, he didn't do anything to him, just take the life out of him, angers me. This dog has been put down, and I believe for good reason. I know his death can't bring back my cat, but this dog has caused so much trouble. Not only did he kill our cat, he has brutally attacked the dog next. I was tuning up my bike and turned my back for a second(our cats are never outside anymore without supervision), and this dog chased my cat 30 feet up a tree. Even after all of this the owners refused to tie him up. It wasn't until he bit a young kid that he was put down. I am very glad the child wasn't seriously injured.
For those of you have dogs I urge you to tie them up. I also suggest that those of you who have cats, who are let outside, keep a close eye on them. I suggest being w/them at all times while they are outside. Or buy a harnest for them. At first they don't like it, but they get used to it, trust me.
Another thing I ask is that if it is childish to have these feelings. Is there something wrong that I cared so much for this cat. Is there something wrong if when I think about him I cry? How do you deal with the death of a pet? I feel terribly bad right now.

[sharpei_nat]

That story really made me cry thinking of my house cat, halfpint who died just two years ago on sept 25 just one day before by birthday. I came home from getting my braces off and found my cat lying on the bathroom floor with her toung hanging out of her mouth, so my mom and I rushed over to the vets and the vet told us that she was braindead and that they would have to put her to sleep. They let me have one last good-bye and one last hug that I could give my cat before she was gone forever. As I did that I was crying my heart out, because that was my first cat that I had ever had and she was with me ever since I was about three. I had to take that day off of school because I was crying SO much and I was SO sad. I still cry now too, but it gets easier as time goes by to deal with the death of my small pets like my rats, hamsters, bird, and rabbit. I only cried when my first two hamsters, 2 fish, and first rat died. Now when a small pet dies I'm still sad but I don't cry.
No, I don't think it's childish if you have those feelings, because anyone who has any feelings for any peson or animal that was close to them would feel that way too.

[Calhoun07]

For those of you have dogs I urge you to tie them up.

I thought there would be leash laws. You should be able to sue your neighbors and get retribution. I know it won't bring your cat back, but still...cats aren't free. And I am assuming there was cost in having to properly dispose of his body. And even if they paid those bills, they should have been fined BIG TIME for breaking the leash law.

I've lost several pets over time. The first dog we lost when I was a kid was Fella, a collie, who one day just disappeared and we never found him. A while later, one of our other dogs brought back a dog bone with him that he found in a ditch, and that's where we found the bones of poor Fella.

There was Duke, a mix breed dog, who got brutally killed when a car hit him. I blame myself for that too because this kid came racing thru on our street (this was when we were in the country) and my mom shouted to grab all the dogs, because we didn't have them on their chains, we were taking them inside, and I hesitated just a moment before grabbing Duke and it was a second too late, because as I was holding two other dogs, he got away and ran right in front of the car. It was horrible

And the other pet I lost that really hurt the most was Ebony, a lab/setter mix with black fur. She was a family pet, really (they all were, of course, but Ebony was certainly special in may ways. I don't think any of us were as close to a pet as we were to Ebony.) My mom found her outside one winter night walking down our road, somebody had just dropped her off. She was just a puppy not more than 6 or 8 weeks old. So we had her for her whole life, and I went on to school and moved out of my home town, and came back on holidays to visit my family and Ebony. One Christmas break, I was home and it was a Christmas morning and Ebony, quite old at this point, was looking up at me with the saddest eyes I ever saw her have, so I went to the floor to pet her since I knew she couldn't move around all that well any more. As I sat there petting her, she got up suddenly then collapsed again, her gums and tongue were complete white.

We rushed her to the vet and he gave her some medicine and some special dog food, and we took her home and she got a little better, but the time came for me to go back to school, so I reluctantly parted with Ebony. My mom took a picture of me with her before I left, and it turned out to be the last time I saw Ebony. She died a week later on New Years Day. My mom called me the next day to let me know, she just couldn't call the day it happened. She said Ebony made an awful howling noise as she died, and a part of me still wonders if Ebony was partly crying because I wasn't by her side.

[Discloner]

I have a pet rat, who is at the moment Ill. She has had a cold ever since I bought her 2 years ago, but recently it has gotten extremly bad. To the point where she sneezes so hard her nose bleeds. I have broughten her to the vet, two times and while the meds they give me help, they only help for so long.

The last time I took her to the vets, the gave me more medicine to give her, and as always I abide by the vet's directions. But the medicine made things worse! She has become, scraggly, dizzy, and a tad off balance. While her sneezing is better, I'm so scared that I'll wake up one day and she won't be alive. Since I saw these changes in her, I stopped giving her, her medication and she has Improved a little bit, but she is no longer the Daisy I once knew. And while I spend these last few days of summer away from home, I am constintly thinking of her and wither I will see her when I return home.

Its funny how attached to animals we get. Something that can't talk or hug, but you know appreciates you, affects our lives in ways we will never phathom. I've lost, mice, a hampster, and a cat...and they have all made me sad, but it's all a part of what makes us stronger.

[Calico]

Well, as some of you may recall, my dog Brandy was just diagnosed with a very aggressive lymphatic cancer. We've started her on chemotherapy (very expensive!), which she is responding to very well. She is still partially blind, but she's really back to her old self, playing with our other dog and racing after birds and chipmunks. However the cancer will never be cured and we have to only hope it goes into remission and we have her for maybe a year or so more. Just the thought of her eventual passing really makes me sad.

It is just so easy to get attached to pets. For the child who doesn't make friends well, a cat or dog can become a very special companion. All my childhood pets are long deceased and I miss them very, very much, though I'm thankful they lived long, healthy lives and pretty much only died of old age. I've never had a pet hit by a car or mauled by another animal. That must be terribly traumatic and you all have my deepest sympathies. ak_girly, if I had been you I would have tracked down that dog and killed it myself. That's just awful, what happened to your cat. :(

[wussiewussie]

Originally posted by Calico
ak_girly, if I had been you I would have tracked down that dog and killed it myself. That's just awful, what happened to your cat. :(

same here, man.. my last cat we put to sleep, Nelson.. he was 15 i believe at the time, i was like 14.. i grew up with that cat, he was as important to me as a human family member. it took me a while to get over it, it became so hard for me to remember the good times as my mom would tell me to do, all i could think about was bringing him to the vet and just watching him die. my eyes seriously are welling up just remembering it.. the cat i have now i'm not as attached to because .. well i didn't grow up with him. but he's a good cat and if he died from something other than natural causes i wouldn't doubt that i would take my anger out on whoever caused his death, whether it was on purpose or not. he's an inside cat, so was our last one, so they tend to be safer. but if by some chance he runs out we just bring him back in. if somehow a dog appeared and attacked my cat, i would seriously beat the thing to death. we have a baseball bat right by the door too, so if the thing was rabid .. he still will get his skull crushed. god, that sounds awfully brutal, but i love cats. dunno why, they're just wonderful animals to me. dogs are cool too, but i never really got to know them. i'm done rambling.

[TimTwoFace]

Hey AK,

I don't have much else to add that hasn't already been said, so...*BIG BIG HUG* The last time I lost a dog was when I was 4, but I was told he was being sent to a farm at the time. Fact is, he was put down for going a little crazy; apparently the runts of litters are most susceptible to that sorta thing. It wasn't until I was 12 that I found out the truth.

Aside from that, I've lost four gerbils over the years...it's not quite the same as a cat or a dog, but hey, they're still pets that we loved in their own way.

The dog we currently own is another story altogether; I've grown up with him and remember so much more about him, so much that I dread the day when he finally does pass on...in like 15 years or so. I can't quite relate AK, but I can totally understand how you're feeling.

-Tim
(More hugs?)

[Pilmedium]

A few years ago, my family's pet fish died about two years after it was bought. I was a little sad, because it did not cause problems for me. If the current "pet" dies, I will run out of the room and smile. It is such a pain. I am not so interested in pets, though. Believe it or not, back when I was in second grade, a tree falling put me into tears.

[Barb Gordon]

*Hugs all peeps who lost pets* Well, as much as I find fish interesting, after awhile mine dying was never a biggie. But then again, that's because I use to have about five, these were goldfish mind you, and they lived over 5 years. Which is insane considering their lifespan is suppose to be super short. Anyhoo, the more actual pet of mine, BJ, and German Sherpherd/Collie, died back when I was in elementary school, well over 6-7 years ago. But I still miss her some, and was incredibly distraught when she died. She was old, just shy of 14 years, and arthritis was really setting in. I remember that day, I used to have it memorized, it was February, a friend asked me how she was doing. I recall remarking how she was doing all right...and boy, I hope she doesn't die! Talk about an awful choice of words. Well I came home that day and went over the the screen door to the backyard to go say hi to BJ and my grandma told me not to go. I totally disregarded her, I mean, why the heck shouldn't I go see my dog? So I went outside and there was nothing outside, and I looked to my left and the doghouse was gone. Then it suddenly hit me how stupid I'd be to no realize it early. Mom said my dad was out with her, and that she barked or something, and then just died right then and there. Really got my dad upset I heard, because he really was fond of the dog. So he had picked her up and took her to the vet. It really bothered me that I never got to see her one last night, but that was my dad's way of always trying to shield me from depressing things. 6 months later my sis and I needed another dog though. That might seem soon to some people, but not to us. We were such animal people and not having a dog was awful. We seriously think, not matter how unplausible it seems, that BJ was looking out for us, because the puppy we got was so much like her. We got the puppy in huntington beach, where BJ had come from. It was a german shepherd/keshound as opposed to a german shepherd/collie. But what was so amazing, and probably why we liked this puppy so much, was the striking similarity in the face and in the coat color in general to that of BJ. Our new dog, Charlie, is now about 7 years old, and heaven forbid her dying, but I know it will come, and now that I'm older, I know it will probably hurt even more. I know for certain when she dies that I wont have another dog until I move into my own place or something. It's always hard losing a pet, and for me, BJ was the first real death to me, and it hurt, alot. But I always found comfort in the fact that she was old, and had been in an increasingly big amount of pain and that now she was out of it. She was a great, amazing dog, and taught me so many things as a child, I'll never forget her.

~Barb

[BrendaBat]

My family pet died recently. But I'm not sad because I killed it.
The stupid dog was untrainable (it jumped on people all the time) and it flipped out whenever the doorbell rang and yet my family still loved it!! One day, it tried to jump up on a small child who came to the door. When I tried to stop it, the thing mauled my right hand (I'm a right-handed cartoonist, so this devistated me).
Dispite the fact that my hand was covered in stitches, my mother and youngest sister wanted to keep the dog! I wanted it gone so bad that I tried to poison it and threated to use legal action to force my parents to have it put to sleep. Eventually they saw things my way, but they were pretty mad at me for a while.

How did you guys get your dogs to behave? Is there any way to train them to stay calm when strangers enter the house?

[Harley]

Three within the past two years. Cats. It was... painful. Two of them, anyway. I didn't even know the third, but it was my brother's.

Shadow was an awesome cat. Friendly as all heck. He was about 14 years old and well, he was old and sick. He was just having such trouble breathing.

My mother and brother brought him to the vet to get checked out. His lungs were filled with fluid and the whole thing was just so stressful for him that he had a heart attack on the examination table.

I had been on my way to meet them cause I knew they were on their way to the vet. I didn't find out til I got there. That one hurt a lot.

Socks was about the same age as Shadow and lived about a year longer. Her kidneys kinda just up and went out on her. I was visiting and I noticed. She was walking all wobbly-like. Tried to warn my mom and get her to the vet sooner, but I don't think she wanted to admit it.

The night before we went to put her to sleep, she couldn't even walk anymore. It was painful for her to move her hind legs and so she would try to drag herself. ::grimace::

I was almost relieved when she was put to sleep. I don't think I could have beared seeing her going through that one more night. We stayed with her until the injection took effect. I don't think we would've felt right, leaving her to die alone. Cat or no, she was still family.

And the latest edition to our tale of woe, my brother recently got a kitten. A very energetic one. He called her, "Buttons, the hell-kitten". She was only 4 or 5 months old and my brother had saved her from some kids who were trying to beat her up.

He couldn't keep it at my mother's cause my step-father was fairly insistent on it. He has one lung, (other removed due to cancer last year.) and so it was brought over to my father's.

Which is... understandable, I suppose. Realistically, he could keep one cat around. But breathing with *two* cats around had been a little bit difficult and I suppose that had put some fear into him.

Buttons ended up chasing a bird right out my father's 5th story window. There's only one window in the entire apartment that doesn't have something blocking it. I've never seen this kitten. But it bothers me a lot for a few reasons.

She was so young. It doesn't seem right on a cosmic scale that she should be saved from dying at the hands of a bunch of kids, only to jump out a window a few weeks later.

And I can't get the thought out of my head that if she had been allowed to live at my mother's that that never would've happened. There are never any windows opened there. It's just a safer place to have cats. But, that's not terribly fair to my step-father. So, what can you do?

=(

[Ren]

On August 8, my cat Alley died. She had stomach cancer, and had to be put down. It hurt so much to lose her, she'd been with my family since I was three. The only way I really had of greiving was to write down everything I knew and remembered about her. I still have my other cat, Ivory, but it's still hard thinking about Alley. I still look for her sometimes. It's horrible remembering it then.

[Singin' Stray Cat]

It's not childish to mourn over the loss of a pet...least, I don't think so. Pets are living things, after all...well no, more than that. They're living things we care about, in many cases, as much as members of our human family.

I remember riding the bus home from school one day, and looking out the window at one stop. It wasn't mine, didn't even know the kids getting off. But I noticed a lady in the street, picking up something with both hands...it was their dog. It wasn't moving. Apparently a car had come through there just seconds earlier, and had struck and killed the dog. Though I didn't know the people living there, it was just heartbreaking to see that lady walk back into the house with her dog...and imagining having to come home to something like that.

My family's lost some pets too...one of them was a black cat named Midnight. He was a tough guy...lived through several cat fights, poisoning, and a fungal infection before finally dying of feline leukemia at the age of 10 years. I still kind of miss him, even though we now have another black cat and a golden retriever. Nothing can really replace a pet, much like nothing can replace a human being.

[Seafaring]

I don't know if they have leash laws here, but the people whos dogs killed our cat, put down one of them, and the other is still without a leash. Our neighbors and my family our trying to do something about it, but these people are very irresponsible, if they don't do anything within the week we are calling the borough office.
At first the pain of losing him was tremendous, I seriously thought about how much I would like to kill that dog, but I knew I couldn't. Although I remember about a week after my cat died, the dog was lying right in the middle of road. I wanted to push the gas pettle and run over the dog, but my Mom told me I had to contain myself. Even if I had what good would I do. But after he chased our other cat up a tree, I was very tempted take the life of this dog.

But to all of you who have had to go through the same thing, you have all my condolences. And thanx for all of your reassurance. Tim thanx for the hugs. And to Calico, I truly hope your dog will get better. I'll say a little prayer for him.
Its kinda funny, but more a long the lines of sad, my friend says she doesn't care if her cat dies, because she can replace it, but if she really feels that way, she is missing out on one of the best and meaningful relationships she could ever have, I do believe.

[Jedigreedo]

Baby - Little siamese cat, got infested with fleas and we didn't get her help soon enough, she was the last pet to die.

Bruiser - The best dog in the world, born in the same week I was, very loyal, we had to put him down because he started having seizures from old age.

Raphael - One of our few male cats, we had him for quite awhile but he got an abcess tooth and it turned out to be worse than the vet thought.

Oliver - He just ran away... we thought we saw him one time some years later at the local ballpark and we tried to go after him but we never saw him after that one sighting.

Rocky - A beagle we had, just got loose and ran away...

Spike - The BEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTT cat in the whole world, we had to put him down because when my house caught on fire some years back we had to move to a temporary house (where we lost Rocky) and before we moved the cats (they were outdoors/indoors cats so they hung around the neighborhood) Spike came up missing and he got seriously injured but we don't know how because he was perfectly fine just after the fire...

Turqoise - A very very nice siamese cat we had, was trapped in a closet during the fire and choked on smoke.

Sweety - Hit by a car

Zippy - Hit by a car

Marty - Hit by a car

Bo - From the same litter as Spike and Marty, we gave him to another family when he was a kitten, he didn't make it past the first night with them because they put him outside and he suffered from too much flea powder being put on him.

Buffy - Was too wild, we had to put her down.

Bandit - The other best dog in the world, he was just a puppy and I cared for him literally since he was born before he even opened his eyes but he got a hold of a dead bird and got uncurably sick.

Rasia - Hit by a car

Midnight - A kitten I got from a neighbor, died the next morning from some eye sickness.

That's all the pets my family has had that have died in my lifetime. Well there were some fish and some turtles, but I never really got attached to them like I did with the cats and dogs.

[hello_lola]

Originally posted by ak_girly

Its kinda funny, but more a long the lines of sad, my friend says she doesn't care if her cat dies, because she can replace it, but if she really feels that way, she is missing out on one of the best and meaningful relationships she could ever have, I do believe.

I completely agree with you. The dog we have now came to us by way of a woman who said she was "tired" of him and was going to remove his tags and "set him free" :rolleyes: . We offered to take him in, and it was really worth it. At first, I didn't think I could ever grow to love him, because I felt like it would be a betrayal to my first dog who died last October under very stressful and sad circumstances. But as soon as I met my new dog, I just knew I had to love him.