How To Cope With Putting A Cat Down
Information technology is ane of the most difficult decisions that pet owners have to face, especially when forced with life circumstances that eventually lead to surrender their pet.
Ane of the most common reasons for surrendering pets is moving, especially in rented spaces where the landlord does non allow pets for certain reasons similar noise or cleanliness issues.
Additionally, most pet owners surrender the offspring of their pets to other or new pet owners in instance additional pet maintenance doesn't fit their budget or lifestyle. Some are forced to give their pet abroad due to allergy problems that arise among family members.
Whatever the reason is, surrendering a pet can besides experience like losing a pet for well-nigh pet owners, especially those who have years of invested emotional zipper. The more years you spend with your pet, the more difficult it will be to give them abroad.
Here are some communication and tips on how you tin deal with grief afterwards you lot surrender your true cat:
Keep a Positive Mindset
Preparing your mindset during the early days of your grieving is the most of import part of salubrious coping and healing because people who surrender their pets often feel prejudice from other pet owners. Giving your cat away tin can look similar you are an irresponsible pet possessor for not giving your pet the best living condition but keep in listen that the contrary is e'er true.
Surrendering your pet means choosing what is best for them.
Surrendering your pet to a different home or owner is always the best decision to give your pet a better living status. Of grade, information technology is perfectly normal to feel guilt whenever yous give up your pet. You are not turning your dorsum against them past giving them abroad.
In fact, by acknowledging that you can't provide a tenable life to your pet because of moving, behavior issues, or other serious personal problems, surrendering them to adoption homes or aspiring pet owners is the best decision to make, albeit the hardest one.
And yeah, we know, that cats do miss their owners:
Select the Best Home for Your True cat
In most cases, rehoming your cat or finding your cat's adjacent owner tin be a pre-emptive coping mechanism because y'all tin choose the best future home for your pet. In other words, becoming more involved with the experience of surrendering your true cat can assist your remove all doubts and worries about its time to come well-being since, as a true cat owner, you would merely want the best for your cat.
You can play an active function in rehoming your true cat by crowdsourcing through social media or asking your friends or colleagues if they know someone who may be interested in adopting your cat.
This manner, yous can judge if the person adopting your cat is a decent and capable person that would save y'all future worries whenever you lot call back nearly your cat once you parted ways.
Knowing that your cat'southward future owner has the means and can requite it the best living status that you can retrieve of, yous can rest bodacious that your cat is in a better identify.
Similarly, if your social network is quite small, deciding to rehome your cat through a trusted local creature shelter can aid you avoid overthinking most your true cat'southward well-existence.
Animate being shelters are usually affiliated with rescuers and veterinarians who can provide temporary professional care until your cat gets adopted past another person looking for a pet.
Moving on without doubts about your cat's well-being can help you cope with pet separation.
Write a Letter to Your Cat
Try to unpack your emotions by putting all of them into words and writing all the things y'all want to say and what yous may have forgotten to say before y'all parted ways. Doing so can help you have your own time to grieve, and information technology tin be a symbolic act to start moving on at your own pace. Don't worry if it takes you more than than a twenty-four hour period or fifty-fifty a calendar week to cease your letter. Everyone has their own fashion of moving on.
Every bit pet owners, nosotros would always discover ourselves talking to our pets. This is one way we actively communicate with them even if we don't speak the aforementioned language.
On the other manus, writing a letter can give y'all this familiar feeling of communicating you lot're your erstwhile pet in the class of writing. This way, writing a letter to pour out all of your emotions can really help yous cope with grief.
Taking this farther, you can probably start a periodical or diary where your true cat is your addressee. It can contain everything y'all've washed in a mean solar day, every foreign thought that passes through your caput, your secrets, etc.
It can be anything you lot want to, and your former cat can be your best confidant. In this way, you tin practise open advice about your own feelings and deal with them simultaneously, which is a very healthy type of coping. It might be strange at first, but you can trust that information technology volition become more than natural with each day that passes.
Learn to Forgive Yourself
Surrendering your true cat can make you experience like a failure simply you need to forgive yourself to gratis yourself from the guilt that you're feeling. Guilt and grief go manus in paw when surrendering your cat. Do not blame yourself for surrendering your pet considering it tin simply make it more difficult for you to move on. Sometimes, things just don't work out in the end.
Life circumstances often change, and there are but some instances where you lot might really need to let go of your cat. Amid the nearly common reason for surrendering your cat is because someone in your household is allergic and, therefore, cannot go along your pet anymore. Some moving issues can cause some behavioral problems to your cat.
In that location are just some cats that experience a hard time adjusting to new environs. Cats are highly territorial, then they are susceptible to experience high levels of stress when it comes to geographical changes. Nevertheless, your determination to move might take been due to career or personal family unit reasons, and your cat'due south unchanging behavior can affect your decision whether or not to surrender it for adoption.
These changes sometimes happen suddenly, and you might not accept control over the things that are happening. It is not your mistake, and it volition have you lot anywhere to blame yourself over the things that are not under your control. Be gentle with yourself every bit you lot grieve.
Join Online Pet Support Group
Reading stories of people who have gone through the same experience equally you can help y'all accept that your cat is now doing well with its new owner. They can give tips and teach y'all how to cope with pet separation based on their own experiences.
Online support groups are common nowadays. Various online support groups tin can help you deal with your feelings as a pet owner. After all, only other pet owners who accept lost their own tin can fully understand how you feel.
Additionally, it tin can also help you requite advice to others who might notwithstanding be deciding if they should give up their pet or not. What is important is yous are starting to receive back up from people who have gone through a similar loss, and by giving other people emotional support, grief becomes shared and less of a burden to bear.
Actively Deal With Your Emotions
Allow yourself to feel lamentable when you exercise because bottling your emotions can only hurt you and heal you in the long run. Cry if you need to and don't be aback to express your grief. It is crucial to deal with your grief and process your emotions during this period.
Expect to have some random outbursts of sadness in the first few weeks because your moments spent with your cat are still fresh in your retentivity. Doing so can allow you to recover much faster because feelings of sadness and grief tin can be fleeting in nigh cases. You lot can cry information technology out as much every bit you want, as information technology tin can as well be cathartic.
Know that this is but a normal human reaction and role of the process of healing. If y'all tin can't role normally, try to take a day off and remainder.
Keep Your Other Pets Salubrious
If you have surrendered your true cat while you still have some pets left for you to take care of, don't allow your grief or sadness to get in the style of taking care of yourself and the pets that you still have.
You might surrender some of your cats considering of pet maintenance issues, specially if your true cat has given nascency to another batch of kittens, don't shell yourself to it. Information technology is natural to give away some of your cat'southward offspring, peculiarly if you don't have infinite and means to sustain more cat lives.
Granted that cats commonly give nascency to iv up to 12 kittens, virtually owners surrender some kittens to others who would like to foster a pet true cat. Keep in mind that this is just normal as a cat possessor. It is always possible that a time may come when you demand to give away your cat'south kittens.
When that happens, redirect your grief into taking care of your pets. Always take the effort of channeling negative emotion into a positive one.
Of course, it tin can't be helped to always wonder how your surrendered pets are doing, simply if you requite yourself enough time to distance yourself away from the feeling of losing your pet, you lot only take to recollect that the pets that y'all have are grateful that you are withal taking care of them, which is what matters the most.
Avoid Home on the Past
You lot must control yourself to snap out of dwelling on the past whenever you catch yourself dwelling on your memories of your cat. Dwelling as well much tin can exist a source of mental and emotional fatigue if you autumn into the trap of doing it.
Domicile on the past tin be tempting, especially during the commencement few weeks of being separated from your true cat. Expect that it can become your initial reaction whenever you might see a devious cat on the street or overhear someone randomly talking nigh cats. It is fine since yous won't always be able to control it.
At some betoken, if your dwelling becomes much more frequent, the stress tin can accept a price on you mentally and emotionally.
Moving on even so requires discipline despite how stoic information technology may sound. Equally pet owners, sometimes in that location are but moments when we should as well learn to accept care of ourselves. Take this as a lesson to learn how to let go and accept that you lot may not exist able to see your cat again.
It can exist a long process, and it will surely have a lot of time. But this is a very crucial time to focus on yourself and assist yourself move on, and never lose that willpower to just keep on moving forward. Trust the process that everything will be okay.
Keep a Memento
You would need something symbolic to concretize your grief. It can exist anything from your former pet's most favorite plaything or a piece of clothing or accessory like a collar. Something to remember your cat tin help y'all to your path to healing and letting become afterward going through the experience of surrendering your pet.
Moving on from a loss does not mean absolute forgetfulness. It does not hateful that you should completely forget your cat direct away. You can have this opportunity to motion on by beingness at peace with the absence of your pet, and we know that information technology will never be that easy.
When you go along a memento, it is entirely up to you how you would like information technology to assistance yous motion on. You can treat it as a personification of your one-time cat guiding you towards your path in healing. You lot may also speak to it equally if you are talking to your cat to limited and let your grief be felt.
You lot would probably prefer to shop it where you won't be able to run across information technology often. Since every single ane of us has unlike means of coping with grief, yous can treat your memento as a physical symbol to distance yourself abroad from.
Develop a New Hobby
Immerse yourself into unlike concrete activities to continue yourself healthy and active. Socialize with some friends more than often or invite them to your place. Go out and exercise in your costless time by running some laps around your neighborhood.
This way, you tin can help yourself to physically and mentally recover from grief. The important thing is to proceed yourself from being stationary. Keeping still for more than a few minutes can invite stray thoughts that might potentially lead to habitation or grief.
However, yous should not mistake doing physical activities as a lark from feeling the pain of separating from your cat. You should do activities that are productive and helpful to your health. Resorting to self-destructive behaviors is non an option and volition not help you heal. It is much more important to take care and watch over yourself while you are grieving.
As a terminal notation…
No pet owner e'er wants to function ways with their pet, and it will almost ever exist heartbreaking for an possessor to surrender their dear pets.
However, as pet owners, we might arrive at that point where we might need to surrender ours to meliorate ourselves and our pets. Information technology would hateful to choose a difficult conclusion that nosotros are facing in our own lives.
For some pet owners, cats may not be equally playful compared to dogs, but they can e'er express their affection to their owners in the most surprising ways. They are also one of the near difficult animals to let go of because of how much individual personality they can present.
On the other hand, we tin can all agree that cats can adjust to any situation, and they are one of the most independent animals in the world.
Nigh of the fourth dimension, they can survive on their ain without man care.
So, for cat owners who have surrendered their cats for serious reasons, ever call up that your cat will always be okay. To whom you lot may have given the responsibility of taking care of your true cat, trust them and let them express the love you have once given to your beloved pet.
Simply know that you lot take been a good owner up to the very terminal moments yous shared with your cat, for choosing the best for them and thinking about their future in the hands of fellow cat-lovers.
Brush abroad the judgment you may hear from others nearly giving your cat away because, in the end, you did non abandon them by giving them another habitation to belong. Remember that the path to healing tin be a long journey, but you will somewhen get there.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do non necessarily stand for those of The Pet Rescue.
Source: https://thepetrescue.com/cats-cope-with-giving-up-a-cat/
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