The loss of a pet is still a death in the family
IT’S a bit of a cliché but we Brits really are a nation of animal lovers – as the recent story of a woman fired after the death of her dog proves.
Emma McNulty says she lost her job in a take-away joint because she was too upset to work following the loss of her pooch.
A subsequent petition was started demanding employers grant bereavement leave in the wake of a pet’s death. So far, more than 11,000 people have signed it.
Now I know there will be those who will roll their eyes and mutter darkly under their breath at this turn of events. Isn’t this snowflakery at its finest? Aren’t there bigger things to get upset about other than finding your goldfish belly-up in its bowl?
And can a dog or a cat croaking really be as painful as watching Great Aunt Edith draw her last breath?
The fact is the answer for many people is a resounding ‘YES’.
The grieving process might be different but that doesn’t negate the shock and upset when Tiddles or Rover turns up their claws.
And as someone who has lost both parents and pets, I’m fully behind the idea. The grief isn’t comparable but that doesn’t make it a lesser process and frankly, people who don’t get upset at the death of the family dog or cat or gerbil worry me a bit.
It’s never ‘just an animal’.
The effects of losing a furry chum can last for longer than you imagine, too.
This week, discussing the petition with a chum, we regaled each other with our stories of lost pets. Mine was all about our cat Horace.
Horace – H for short – was a big, strong tom much given to carousing like an old Hollywood film star, staying out late, wooing the ladies and getting into brawls.
He could bring down a seagull and was a mean mouser but liked nothing more than a vigorous ear tickle. Although that was our secret – he had a reputation in the street to maintain.
My better half, the kids and I, adored H and, perhaps because he was a rescue cat, H loved us right back.
But illness brought him low and after weeks of administering meds and enticing his dwindling appetite with best cod, we knew his time had come.
Remembering how we allowed him to sunbathe in the garden for one more time before he turned back to us, unbidden, to get in his cat basket for his last journey to the vet, made me cry all over again.
I had to wear sunglasses for half an hour and pretend it was the glare from my computer screen.
We have had other cats – and rabbits and fish – in the intervening years but H was special, perhaps because he was the first pet we owned as a family.
And that’s why the death of an animal affects us so much. They are our confidantes and friends, the glue that binds us together with others, our support system and for some the only thing in their lives they have to love and which loves them in return.
Cats and dogs might not be able to cook us tea or discuss the latest Netflix box set but they share our lives and when they go, we lose something of ourselves.
To denigrate or laugh at that is both insensitive and insulting.