Why am I crying over a darn cat?

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I have a friend that usually has multiple cats at a time. When they die, she never looks to replace them, but one always turns up somehow. Last Christmas one made its way to her house and hung around her porch waiting for her to invite him into the family.
 
I had one show up at Christmas also, several years back. It had been dumped on the block and several neighbors were feeding it, one family of renters had made it a bed in their falling-down garage. I had just arrived in town while all the neighbors had apparently departed for Christmas. The cat had nothing to eat with all its regular feeders gone, and heard me feeding my own cats that I’d just driven 8 hours with, and he came beating down my door. He is now living with another cat in my third floor bedroom (because neither of them got along well with the rest of the cats but they do okay together).
 
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SMHW said:
Do people really think birds aren’t mentioned in the Bible?
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I think he meant they aren’t described as being in heaven, not that they aren’t mentioned at all. That was the meaning I took.
 
Patty is correct. The denial is based on not finding birds mentioned alongside the streets of gold and the house-sized pearls. Personally, I like gravel roads and wouldn’t care for the gold ones. Must be slippery in a rain.
 
phoage said:
I have not been able to stop crying.
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I know that feeling, see if you are going through the 5 stages of grief, knowing in what stage you are can help you deal with it better, but crying really helps, i heard that Tomas Aquinas wrote about “dealing with sadness”, and in that document he would have recommended crying and sleeping to feel better.
 
Irishmom2 said:
but one always turns up somehow.
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They have some kind of innate sense for that. (Especially when daddy says no, don’t feed it!)

It wasn’t long after the abused orange one from the rescue place (who ran into the room to leap in my lap, to their surprise, and never sat in one again) died that a half-grown siamese showed up in the back yard, and kept trying to come in . . .he knew . . .

I said “no” (so of course they fed it when I wasn’t home), but melted partway when it walked alongside me while mowing the lawn (gas mower), and caved once it was staggering, apparently from hunger.

We assume that he got left behind when someone got evicted, as he was clearly an indoor cat who knew what that meant. He spent a couple of days in the neighbor’s yard too, we found, leaping into arms and trying to climb up people.

but, yeah, they have this sense for whom to glom on to . . .
 
Well…please don’t think badly of me but…when I was in junior high, a girl would always tell me about her baby chick and how it just followed her everywhere around the housed …one day, she was sad and told me that her little chick had died…and then I asked her how…well, she said that she was going outside in a hurry and had slammed the door…ugh! I had to get away fast cause this was too funny! 😬 🐥
 
I know, children often kill small pets by accident. It’s part of the learning curve of pet care and life! I have no memory of the incident but mom told me I once tried to sit on a small dog and injured it. Often I wonder if I killed it and she was just sparing me the horror of my actions. I really don’t know! I believe this happened when I was still a toddler!

I’m such a sop when it comes to animals, especially pets and even more so with dogs. I can’t even watch Emergency Vets. I just lose it! 😂😱😂
 
Hey, I feel the same way! I can not tolerate any animal abuse also. And, some people still leave their dogs in the backyard!
 
And, I also love all of God’s other creatures…lizards, frogs, bugs, spiders and their artistic ability of making webs, butterflies, bees, etc, 🦎 🦋 🐛 🐌 🪲 🦗 🕷️ 🕸️
 
There may very well be a “rainbow bridge”. Anything is possible. It’s a nice thing to believe in – a very positive thing.

Ultimately, it’s up to God as to whether or not we are reunited with our departed pets, and whatever God decides, it will be right, even if He says no, and we will be okay with that. Because, we know we can trust God, as He is perfect, and perfectly righteous.

Grieving for a lost pet is no different than grieving for any close friend who has loved you unconditionally, and has enriched your life immensely. It’s normal.

You have given this kitty a wonderful life during the time he had left… By adopting him, you actually saved his life. It was kind of you to adopt him, and it sounds like he appreciated it, and returned the favor with a great deal of affection.

Some say that animals (including pets) are for earth only, and have no afterlife. We don’t know that. There’s a Psalm that seems to declare otherwise – a Psalm that tells us God will preserve the animals. That can be interpreted to mean He preserves the animals while they’re here on earth, or it could mean He preserves them for all of eternity.

I personally believe that love is eternal, and cannot be extinguished.
 
I always thought pets are there to teach you humility.

The thing with cats and dogs is they love you for all the things any fool could do! They don’t care how smart you are or what you do for work or whether you’re rich or wear nice clothes. They care that you feed and pet and play with them. (I say this as I have a cat curled up under my chair wondering why I’m not petting him some more!) All the simple things that are meaningless to humans.

I figure they’re there to teach us real humility. Not that we’re worth less, but that we’re valued for all the things that seem unimportant.
 
As former CAF poster whom I really admired Pianistclare once said to her students, our pets help us to “learn to love and let go“.

The pain from their death definitely hurts, and sometimes I wonder if the emotional pain we experience from our pets’ death is worth the joy of having them in our lives to begin with.

The answer for me is a resounding “yes”.
 
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Lucia24 said:
God love animals as much as people. You can pray chaplets for any of God’s creatures and creation. I’ve never understood the whole “animals can’t go to Heaven” thing because God created them with a soul just like us.
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Hi Lucia,I appreciate the comfort you are offering our op …although your opening words don’t sit well with me ,I believe animals are given into our care ,they are a gift from God ,but God loves people so much much more,so much that He sent his only son to be with us ,to die for us so that we can be with Him in heaven.Jesus didn’t die for animals to go to Heaven,animals don’t sin,they don’t receive Jesus in Holy Communion.
God bless 🙏
 
Thanks to all the people that responded to this post. I really expected little or no response and posted mostly as a means to write out and share my grief.

I listened to a YouTube video by Fr Mike Schmitz, Will my pet be in Heaven. He says that, since heaven is a place of perfect happiness, if you need the pet to be happy, it will be there. The caveat is, if you need the pet to be happy, you are probably not detached from worldly things and might need more time in Purgatory. Seems right to me. (Please, this is a bad explanation of what he said so take this with a grain of salt and listen to Fr Mike’s video).

Patrick
AMDG
 
It is normal to cry for losing your beloved cat. I grew up with cats and dogs. My dog got hit by a truck 32 years ago and died. We buried her in our back yard and I made a wooden cross for her. My cat was given away to a pet shelter 31 years ago because we couldn’t bring him to the United States when we moved here. I still think about my favorite dog and cat when I am sad. They are still in my heart and I will never forget them. Sometimes I cry thinking about them and sure hope I can see them in heaven one day. So it’s ok to cry.
 
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