Good.
Good.
We didnt once, we took an elderly cat to the cat emergency place, they gave her stuff and put her in a high O2 cage, but she passed away, and we couldnt be there. Never again.
Yep. Had an emergency situation where my doggy died really quickly at the vet. They took him back. Assistant with palm up. Like you stay here. Never again. I’ll push my way right in.
After our previous dog had to be put down (he had a lot of health problems), we were sitting on the back patio on a sunny spring morning, watching the crate and dog bowls dry-out after giving them a cleaning, and I asked my wife, thru the tears, if we’d ever need these things again. She said, “probably.”
I suffered for over two weeks, and had a lot of the same sentiment expressed here. I was not ready to have another dog yet, but I was open to the idea, someday. Well, a friend of my wife mentioned her son was getting ready to surrender his dog, and offered us a look. After considering, we did, and we took her home (our first “rehoming”). She was crazy, but sweet and smart, and learned quickly - needed a lot of guidance. She literally licked tears of grief from my face. So, in one case, it can be helpful to get another animal. Not to replace the one lost, but to ease the grief, and let your heart love another that is in need.
If you can! Depending on the animal and the protocol, the vet may not allow it. We had a guinea pig euthanized and it would have cost extra to stay with him. I think I mentioned that on the boards, not long after, and the consensus was they use a different protocol (less distressing to watch).
For an animal that loves you, absolutely!! In fact, if possible, have someone come to your house - it’s how we let our Pete-loaf go, when his time came.
Beck and DrDeth mention cases where their pets went unexpectedly (very ill, but being treated), and while that sucks, you can sort of understand the staff needing to concentrate on the animal and not dealing with distressed humans at the same time. Obviously I don’t know any of the details in either case.
From a human standpoint: when my son broke his arm, he was brought to the hospital by ambulance. I actually got to the hospital before he did. I wanted to fill out the paperwork while I was waiting - and they wouldn’t do it. Then they expected me to LEAVE A DISTRESSED 4 YEAR OLD in the ER to go to the counter to do paperwork. Yeah, not gonna happen.
Back to the original post: our budgie, Morty, had not been doing well last summer. The Indian Ringneck had taken to attacking her (we’d been told by his previous owner that he got along well with her budgies, but Rio apparently disagreed). So we moved the budgie cage, with Rick and Morty, up to my office. After she was there in the quieter area, I could hear she had breathing issues.
We took her to the vet, they did light sedation to try to do X-rays etc, and she never recovered. Which meant Rick was a solo budgie for a few months.
Budgies are social birds, and we’re looking at travelling a lot this year. Not idea for Rick to be in a room by herself for weeks upon weeks. I finally went to the animal shelter to adopt some companions, a few weeks ago. Good timing - they’d gotten in a large batch of budgies, and had plenty of both genders.
So, like @Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker , we adopted new pets not so much for ourselves, as for the one left behind who needed companionship.
My vet’s office snuck me in when it was time to say goodbye to my old man cat during COVID. There was no way I could’ve just handed him over in the parking lot.
Then the vet’s office called me a few days later and said they had a litter of kittens that needed a home. They snuck me in the office again and I left with two kittens who made it clear I was not leaving without them.
I had a cat die at the vet once without me. But I thought when I left her there that I’d be coming to take her back home alive; even if she wouldn’t be alive much longer after that; they thought they could save her but they couldn’t. I still feel bad about that.
Cats (and other animals) are really good at hiding how sick they are (a survival trait), and it can be damned hard for owners and vets alike to know just how close they are to the bridge.
When I lost my good boy Yeager at 15 yrs. I was sure I could never have another pet. People scoff, but that dog was like a child to me. After 6 mos. I understood I am a pet person and don’t want to spend my life without them in it. I got my brothers, two mini schnauzers, and my two shelter kitties. Do I love them like Yeager? No. But I do fiercely love them and they have brought joy to my life.
We had to have our big dog put down a little over a month ago. However, we have three others, so we’re not looking for any replacements! I have to say, the pack’s been much more cohesive and better behaved since then. On the down side, I don’t feel as secure, and of course we’re broken-hearted.
We are never looking, but they always find us. Our ideal pack number seems to be three. When Ella died we weren’t “looking”, but we still returned from St Martin with Simi.
True, the universe is always sending another one our way!
They really, really are, especially prey animals. Our budgie was doing all his usual flying around; he’d actually come and devour Birdie Crack (millet) whenever it was offered. (“he/him” because we had been told both Rick and Morty were male, so the pronouns have stuck)
The signs that he was declining were really not evident until we got him in a quieter room (where I could hear the wheezing), and in his last few days, I actually got him to step onto my finger several times. In hindsight, the wheezing had been going on for longer than we realized; I’d sort of noticed it a time or two when he was eating millet near me downstairs, but his behavior was fine so I discounted it.
And of course Rio (the ringneck) had just started really going after him in the last few weeks downstairs; a friend suggested that maybe Rio sensed that Morty was ill. Could be. I know that when he really went after Morty, we got Morty into the cage, and Rio STILL tried to get at him through the cage bars.
Pete (a.k.a. Pete-loaf, Pete-nik, Petie-pie and Hippo-Pete-amus) did his best to behave normally even as he was visibly declining. He’d sit on our lap and purr. He’d come running when we rattled the bag of treats, then mouth them and drop them, uneaten. We’d asked the vets to let us know if they thought it was time to let him go; we decided it was time probably right as they would have spoken up.
So true. I often think about how our current dog came to us and the timing of it. She needed a new home (they were saying if we didn’t take her she was going to be surrendered to the shelter), and we were still grieving the loss of our previous dog. A passing comment helped us meet her and the rest just fell into place.
I had my dog Jed’s ashes from when I was a kid for a while. When I found a puppy of my own after college, I had been doing quite a bit of camping in Baja and wished I could have shared those times with Jed. I decided to take his ashes down and scatter them in a nice spot.
It was windy out on the point, and when I went to scatter the ashes the wind blew them all over my new puppy. I decided it was the anointing of the new dog with the old and have repeated the tradition over the years.
Further confirmation (somewhat tangential and a bit long, but still kinda relevant),
Years ago, I didn’t realize at first that a cat wasn’t eating because he was getting up on the cat food table and picking food up into his mouth in an entirely normal fashion.
But he was then depositing each mouthful back on the plate instead of swallowing it . . .
(Feline leukemia; the vaccine was pretty new at the time and he hadn’t had it yet. Prednisone caused a three-year remission, after the first I-forget-how-many-months of which we dropped the prednisone. When he quit eating the second time, putting him back on prednisone only helped for a day. But for those three years, he didn’t know he was sick.)
Indeed. I wasn’t actively looking as Sally approached the end, just browsing Merrimack River’s adoptable cats page every now and then because why not. And then, the night before Sally went to the vet, there he was, cauliflower ears, giant feet, and all. And I knew I had to have him.
This is a very hard thing for me to talk about. Losing my animal friends always has me sobbing harder than when I’ve lost humans.
One option is to make it more about the abandoned cat or dog needing a human, and less about whether the human needs a “new pet” or “replacement pet”. This is just a thought, and not meant to minimize the pain involved!
Yes, in the case of Cats, Bast seems to have a decent cat distribution system.
@Napier –
Yes. They don’t replace. No individual is replaceable.
But the essence of Catness (and Dogness, etc.) remains in the world; and other manifestations of Catness are looking for humans to adopt.
The newest addition to my household looks almost exactly like one I lost a couple of years before he showed up. They’re probably related; they were born on the same hillside less than two miles apart as the crow flies or the tomcat travels; though not closely related as they were born somewhere around 18 years apart. I suspect the father of the earlier cat was the great(s) grandfather of the current look-alike; quite possibly multiple greats.
But there’s no question he’s not the same cat. He’s not replacing the earlier cat, and not only because he chooses a different spot on the bed. He is himself. But he was looking quite hard for a home, and seems quite glad to have found this one; and I’m quite glad that he did.