Death of a Pet

My Experiences of Petloss - My Cat Ginger

My next experience of the death of a pet came with Ginger.

Ginger was a huge and magnificent ginger tomcat with beautiful markings.

Our local paper always has a section in it about the local animal shelters and animals that are looking for homes. For a few weeks I had noticed an advert asking for a home for an elderly black cat who had serious health problems.

I considered whether I was able to look after such a cat and resolved that if the advert continued to appear in the paper for a few more weeks that I would give him a home.

Ginger - now at Rainbow Bridge

The advert continued to appear, each time sounding more desperate, so I went to the rescue centre to meet this cat.

That day I met Barney who I did rescue and whose story I will tell later on, but at the same time I found another two cats desperate for homes.

The rescue centre had tried for months to find them a home and I couldn't bear the thought of the death of a pet when there was room in my house for them. Amber was a female tortoiseshell cat whose owner had died and Ginger, the biggest cat I think I've ever met, was a stray who had been picked up with several health problems.

'Vinney' as the rescue centre had named him, had apparently been found as a stray and had had terrible infection around his eyes when he was found. This had taken weeks and lots of visits to the vets but they had finally healed and now he needed a home, so he, Barney and Amber came home with me.

He was around 8 years old when I got him and he proved to be a real character. He became the best of friends with my dogs and they would spend every evening curled up together. My Mother took a shine to him for this reason, and enjoyed taking photos of him with her Boxer dog Bruno. 

For the first month he was kept indoors to get used to his new home, and after that he proved increasingly difficult to get in at night. This was made even worse by the fact that a few of my thoughtless neighbours, including, unfortunately, my own Mother, started to feed him making him even more confident that he needn't come home at night. My Mother had decided that she liked the relationship he had with dogs, and wanted to continue to take photos of him and her dog, to the point where she just wanted him full stop, regardless of the consequences for me, or for him.

I repeatedly asked both my neighbours, and my Mother to stop this, and pointed out if they carried on he would inevitably end up dead on the road, but not only did they not stop this selfish and thoughtless behaviour (they would lure him in with titbits and keep him in their houses, then thoughtlessly throw him out last thing at night, because they wanted the idea of a cat, but not the actual responsibility of things like a litter tray, and the cleaning up after them), my own Mother actually offered to "buy" him from me, as if he were for sale and as if there were not hundreds of cats sitting in rescue centres and shelters that she could have saved instead.

Despite being neutered by the rescue centre Ginger was a tomcat through and through and enjoyed nothing better than staying out late and getting in fights with the neighbour's cats.

Every night I would go out and do my best to fetch him in but he was absolutely determined he was going to get out again. I was constantly competing with the lure of the neighbour's and my Mother's tidbits, the lure of the great outdoors and the neighbour's cats to fight with, and the neighbours and my Mother literally standing there calling him the opposite direction even as I tried to call him into his own home, trying to keep him safe and alive at night.

One day I saw him watching me closing one of the windows and the following day I got up to find the window open again.

It turned out he had actually taught himself how to open my windows and then went on to open doors and when I got locks for those, even started trying to chew his way out through my back door.

I tried everything to keep him in but he was determined, and this sadly was to be his undoing.

One night, my birthday in fact, and the only night in about five years that I had to stay away from home, he was knocked down outside.

I can remember telephoning my Mother in the morning as I had stayed at my friend's house and was due to go shopping that morning. My Mother asked what time I was coming home and I knew from her voice that something was wrong and instinctively asked 'which one has been run over?' She was shocked at this but told me it was Ginger. Sadly after months of my Mother and the neighbours behaving the way they had, it was obviously no surprise to me. It was inevitable. 

It reminded me of when I had had to tell my boyfriend over the phone that Spider was dead. It is very hard to deal with the death of a pet but even harder I have found to tell someone else that their pet has died.

Our neighbours found him and didn’t tell us this until the next day so even now I have no idea what happened and whether he was alive when they found him.

I tried so hard to keep him in but he was just stubborn and obviously used to living outside. Worse still, he was continuously being tempted by thoughtless individuals who thought only of themselves, and not the very obvious danger of their actions. I had tried to keep him safe but in the end I hadn't been able to save him.

I live in a quiet road which is also a dead end so there is no through traffic. At the time of night he was killed there would have been very few cars about so he was desperately unlucky to be killed only two years after I brought him home.

My Mother, ever thoughtful, (I discovered in my thirties she was a narcissist and I had spent a lifetime as her Scapegoat child), then compounded the grief I was feeling, by thoughtlessly announcing that she thought my neighbours, who had been feeding him and stood calling him in the opposite direction when I had tried to get him in at night, had also run him over. She was supposedly convinced of this, based purely on them being the ones that had found him, and because they had apparently put him into a cardboard box, and had put a pillow under his head. I, on the other hand, felt this was an attempt by her to make the situation worse than it already was, and to make me feel anger towards them, and was her attempting to take advantage of the situation, which was something I knew she did often, and a pretty low level to stoop to. 

At the time he died I was unwell myself and didn't have the strength to dig a hole so my Brother came round and helped my Mother and I bury Ginger in my garden. However, before this, not content on already accusing my neighbours of running him over, my Mother attempted to have my cat, buried in her own garden. I'm actually shaking my head as I write this. She actually tried to insist that my cat, the one I had rescued and cared for for nearly two years, whom she had already tried to buy from me, whom she had tempted into her house repeatedly for months with tidbits, then throwing him out late at night, even after I had repeatedly asked her not to, and had told her exactly why, because he would end up being killed on the road, when he was then killed on the road, as a direct result of this, and on my birthday no less, she tried to insist that he be buried in her garden. 

The death of a pet can be very traumatising. I was very upset as it seemed so unfair and unlucky that on the one night in five years I had stayed away from home, I had had to return to find the death of a pet. It can be even more traumatising when you also have to deal with controlling people, who try to take over, who think only of themselves, especially when you are not feeling up to dealing with them.

I obviously wondered whether if I had been in that night things might have been different, but I do believe Ginger would have been killed at some point anyway, even if it wasn't that night, because he was just determined to stay out, and the people causing this would not stop, even when repeatedly asked to, and told exactly why. They were simply too thoughtless and selfish to stop. They did not care about my cat, and only cared about the illusion of having a cat. As soon as it got to midnight, they then threw my cat out onto the street, regardless of it being dangerous to do so. 

I had always buried my cats in my garden, mostly because it didn't occur to me that there was any real alternative. Looking back I wish I had had my pets cremated because then I could take them with me when I move in the future.

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 the death of a pet, 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.

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