The ugly side of our pet obsession

The ugly side of our pet obsession

A few weeks back, our new kitten Leo went missing, slipping through the front door and into the night while the rubbish was being taken out. For nearly a fortnight my family contacted vets and visited animal shelters, put up posters and dropped flyers in letterboxes. We wandered the streets every evening, calling his name, as did several incredibly kind neighbours. My daughter even appealed to higher powers, writing Leo’s name on a piece of paper and putting it in a glass of water, explaining to me that it was a makeshift wishing well.

Still, there was no sign of Leo, and after a week I’d almost given up hope. The weather was cold and hostile, Leo had never been outside before, and he was far too young to really make a go of it alone. The fact that he was microchipped, yet we had heard nothing, seemed to confirm my worst fears.

Making the whole thing even more distressing was Leo’s lonely kitten sister, who he’d left behind. They’d never been apart before, and I pictured Leo wandering the streets hungry, cold and confused, wondering why his little companion wasn’t beside him.


Then one afternoon I looked at the Lost Dogs’ Home website, more out of habit than hope, and there he was, among the lost cats, like a convict in a mugshot. Initially I told myself it couldn’t be him, but it was, and he was soon home again, in our laps, purring madly.


We’d only had Leo for five weeks when he went missing, and the kittens had been more my husband and children’s project, the dog being my primary focus. So the intensity of my distress at Leo’s disappearance surprised me, as did my overwhelming joy at his return. Weeks later, I’m still experiencing flashes of happiness, as I remind myself, "Leo’s back!"

But it wasn’t this reminder of how deeply we bond with our pets that left the biggest impression on me. It was seeing the ugly underside of our passion for domesticated animals and the astounding scale of misery on display at animal shelters.

The animal welfare system is severely under-resourced, and our cities are awash with lost and abandoned cats and dogs. After our many fruitless visits to the Lost Dogs’ Home and the RSPCA I found myself wondering, if Leo had been found, but no one had traced him back to us, what would have happened to him? We think he’s adorable, but really, I know that he’s just your average moggy. Would he ever have been adopted, or would he instead have spent the rest of his short life in a small, lonely cage, before inevitably being put down to make room for the next wave of lost cats and kittens?

As I became more convinced that Leo had probably met a tragic end, I kept coming across internet discussions about how best to memorialise dead pets. The pet grief industry is expanding, as people search for a way of acknowledging how much they loved their dead animals. You can now have your fur baby buried in a dedicated pet cemetery, along with a funeral service and even a viewing. You can even have jewellery made, containing their ashes. And none of these options are cheap.

After our sick old tabby was put down earlier this year, my husband was handed a flyer, advertising a cremation service. He rang me from the vet to ask what he should do, and I immediately agreed to the cremation. The thought of simply leaving our beloved cat’s body at the vet just seemed wrong.
That cremation cost $350. A lot of money for an animal that had no awareness of his own mortality, and even if he did, would not have cared one smidge about what we did with his remains.

I am not usually tight with money. Yet that $350 bothered me. And it started to bug me even more after Leo went missing.

Instead of a bag of ashes that still sits above our fireplace, a living cat without a home might have been helped with that money, if we’d donated it to an appropriate animal welfare organisation with a no-kill policy.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how profound the grief for a dead pet can be. And I agree that, as a society, we are long overdue in acknowledging that pain. But rather than channelling our sadness into costly commemorations, shouldn’t we remember how many living animals there are, still looking for the kind of love that our own dead pets once enjoyed?


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