As Smokin said it’s meant to be a keepsake. Many people like to have a keepsake. Some will save the collar or ask for a tuft of fur. We had so many people ask for tufts of fur we started asking people if they wanted it. There are several options for vet clinics for these keepsakes or remembrances. I have seen the forget-me-not seeds but it assumes that people are good at growing things, so I never bought these for our clinic.
We usually just do a nice card. We have several different cards and try to match up the animal on the card with the one that passed away. In some cases we have sent a small dish garden or a donation to a veterinary organization in their pet’s name. We have also given out the small dog or cat angel pins. We just have to try and judge which will be most acceptable to the owners.
As for the paw print I have seen many dead cats and the toes do not splay out postmortem. It’s more likely that it was just a bad imprint as a couple people have said.
If you don’t like it and it makes you uncomfortable then pack it away, throw it out or bury it. However your cat’s death is still recent and you might feel differently in a few months so I’d suggest you just put it in the back of a closet and decide later.
I have all the keepsakes of my pets that I want, in their toys, collars, pictures, etc. When I had my dog Mikey put down after about 13 years together, I cried for days. After I stopped crying and a week had passed, I got a card from the vet in the mail. I started the 2-3 day cry all over again.
We’re required to do those pawprints for every case that dies at the vet school (no matter if private cremation is done or not). Then the students are supposed (if they wish) to decorate the prints and eventually they may get sent to the owners (only those decorated get sent out). While I have patients that I wish I had a memory of, I cannot imagine sending that to an owner, without knowing beforehand if the owner would like it or not.
There’s a car in my neighbourhood with a dead stuffed cat on the dashboard. When I first saw it I thought “oh … my … eeewww”, but now I look out for it and I feel my day is somehow enhanced when I see it. Very strange souvenir of a deceased pet, though.
Well, here’s some more of what went through my mind when I opened it. The paw is splayed out, and I thought it was because they pressed a limp paw into something. That is, I don’t suppose their paws splay out after death, any more than when they’re sleeping and relaxed, but I figure they’d splay out if you were holding the paw and pushing it against something, and the cat’s not reacting.
This is the worst of it, and may be TMI - it occurred to me that the paw is splayed because they were using one of his hind paws, and he was paralyzed. This thought lasted half a second before I decided they wouldn’t be doing this before he was euthanized, and then I realized the vet had euthanized him in the office with our friend there petting and holding him, and the paw print happened later, maybe much later. You know how when somebody mentions the Easter Bunny, you know who he is for half a second before your brain adds, “And he isn’t real”? For that half a second, the splayed paw print equated to the nasty accident that hurt the cat, and not the cat himself.
I feel guilty for not having been the one holding him and petting him. This is the first time someone else has done that. I would have, but we were 10 hours away.
And there was also something jarring about this decoration. The clay-and-pressed-hearts look of this reminded me of something kids would do at school, and the centerpiece of this whole thing is a pawprint that looks so different, so dead, because of its odd shape. These two are so at odds.
So there are the feelings it conjured up for me, unintended as they are.
I think I’d find it less creepy if the cast had been done while the cat at the end of the paw was alive. Maybe that’s a silly distinction, I dunno.
I too have received sympathy cards from the vet’s office, and I found them a very nice touch. I would have a similar reaction to the unsolicited dead-paw impression ornament that the OP had.
A bit off topic here, but one of the nicest “gestures” I’ve ever had done at the vets was a little weird and unexpected, but it touched me anyway. When my last cat, Higgins, was put to sleep, they printed off the bill for his final care. The receptionist was about to hand it over and then noticed that she’d printed it on their standard stationery which featured a cheerful “THANK YOU!” on the bottom. She pulled it back and quickly tore the bottom off. She said she thought it seemed inappropriate to be thanking me for my business that way, when the business at hand was so sad. It was a little weird and impulsive, but I got what she was saying and I appreciated it.