Death of a Beloved Pet

My

Cat

Spider - continued

As an adult, this was my first real experience of dealing with a pet death and the death of a beloved pet and one I will remember vividly all my life.

I took him inside and it seemed unreal. He was still warm and soft just as he had been minutes earlier on my lap.

When I checked him all over there were no scratches or injuries, he was just as he had been moments before.

Just without the light that once sparkled from his eyes.

I cuddled him for the afternoon and I can vividly remember having to make a truly awful phone call to my then boyfriend to tell him what had happened.

It was a phone call I didn't really want to make as it forced me to say out loud that Spider was dead. Having to tell someone else about the death of a beloved pet, was I discovered, even harder than hearing it myself.

My boyfriend then rushed home, himself disbelieving that Spider was really dead and also convincing himself as I did that by some miracle he could be saved.

That night was truly awful. Moses, Spider's Brother seemed intent on driving me mad and started fighting with Geoffrey which he had never done before.

I didn't know then that other pet's are also affected by petloss and the death of a beloved pet, just as I was.

I just didn't have the strength to cope with them so I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.

The next day I woke up with what I now know is a familiar feeling of desperately hoping that it didn't really happen.

But it had happened and the next day we buried Spider at the bottom of the garden under a tree he had loved to play in. The ground was depressingly and infuriatingly hard and only served to make a horrible task even more difficult.

I felt doubly upset as I had specially moved to a rural area to prevent this happening to my pets. But the one little country lane we had near us had cost Spider his life.

I was also upset because I had always wanted to move to Cornwall, somewhere where I felt my pets would truly be safe to roam.

But I hadn't got there in time and Spider would never know what it was to roam safely in the green grass.

Because this was my first real experience of the death of a beloved pet as an adult where I now had to make the necessary arrangements, I had no idea of the options available to me at that time such as pet burial or pet cremation services.

Every now and then I deeply regret this as I moved from that house shortly afterwards and had to leave Spider behind in the garden. If I'd known then as much as I do now, I would have done things very differently.

This was one of the many reasons that led me to build this website and to start writing a book about the death of a beloved pet, dealing with a pet death and petloss.

When the death of a beloved pet happens, many people just have no idea of the many things you can do following the loss of a pet and subsequently regret not finding out about these options in advance, just like I did.

After the death of a pet you may find it hard to think and to make the decisions involved in dealing with a pet death, because the death of a pet is traumatic and shocking, even if you are expecting it.

I really hope this website and my book go some way to answering the questions you may need answering and help you to make the best possible choices before and after the loss of your pet.