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What Do I Tell the Children?
Children and cats
often have very special bonds. The cat is a
playmate, companion and will never, ever pass on
any secrets told to it. He attends dolls'
tea-parties and get pushed around in a pram as
well as many other indignities. He is there when a
child is sick, he scares away the monsters when a
child is scared of the dark. He eats things
sneaked from off the plate. Often he is simply there
giving unconditional, non-judgmental love. So,
when he cat dies, the child may take it very hard.
Don't tell a white
lie in the hope of making things easier; it can
cause a lot more distress than the truth. One of
my friends was told that her adored cat had been
sent to a farm to live happily with other cats.
Later the parents changed this to "he ran
away". She waited at the garden gate every
evening for over a year until her parents told her
the truth. All that she gained from the experience
was a feeling that parents were not to be trusted
and a feeling that she never had a chance to
properly grieve for her cat's death.
Death is hard for a
child to understand, so help him to understand
that death is natural and happens to very old and
very sick animals and people. A child's
experiences are all learning experience; knowing
about death can help him to cope later on when
elderly family members die. If your child is
young, don't use the euphemism "put to
sleep" as the child may expect the animal to
wake up and return or try to exhume the body; some
children develop a fear of going to sleep in case
you bury them.
The may be upset at the
thought of their cat waking up in the dirt.
Explain that the cat was very old or very sick and
that the vet couldn't mend it (children often
think in terms of mending things). Explain that
vets do make sick cats better but that
sometimes cats are just too sick and that the vet
helped it to die without being in pain; otherwise
the child may think that vets kill animals and may
become distressed when another animal goes to the
vet for routine treatment.
If you have to
leave your cat at the vet clinic for disposal, let
your child say goodbye before the body is
deep frozen (avoid mentioning freezing in case
junior attempts to freeze your other pets).
Involve your child in a remembrance service at
home to provide a focus for their grief; it isn't
simply a case of "out of sight, out of
mind". Make sure he has a photographs to
remember the cat by.
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