MY ignorance shining through?! Okay. I have first hand knowledge of farming. Do you? I also understand, precisely, what the meat industry entails. Do you? Or do you presume that Halal is how all animals die? 'Cause it's actually not...
A pig is one of the most intelligent creatures on the face of the planet - yet can, and will, eat an entire human body if left to it. Cows are rumoured to be placid, and easy-going... yet are responsible for more human deaths a year, not to mention the damage to the climate/environment by their methane gas escapage.
My ex is a shepherd. He is also recovering from broken ribs from where one of his ewes took exception to him looking at - that's looking at, mind, not touching, simply looking at - her no longer newborn lamb a few weeks ago. They're feisty creatures, who also object to being shorn (which is necessary for their own health, actually, not just something that farmers do for their own coffers!) and definitely object to being herded at times. I won't tell you about the lambs he lost when their own mothers trampled them in order to get to their feed station. Because you're blatantly in some weird little mind-set that all cows, pigs and sheep love their young and loathe us for... what? Exploiting them? Do you actually grasp husbandry at all?!
I'll refrain from telling you about my god-daughter who rears her own pig for sausages each year - names it, loves it, slaughters it. Because she's a farmer's daughter. It's not that she doesn't have empathy for the pig - simply that she's expected to take over one day. And she will. And she'll be excellent.
Oh, and I spent the vast portion of 3 years with a rooster crooning in my ear, because he'd fallen in love with me, so I "get" chickens, too. Have my own flock. Rabbits, too.
But I also have a cat and a dog whom I know, if I were to die, and no one found me... would eat me. Doesn't mean they don't care for me - simply that they're animals.
So, as for ignorance - how about this: YOU have made an awful lot of assumptions about most of us upon this thread, derailing it from the OP's shock that her much-loved cat had to be euthanised. YOU are the ignorant one, be you male, female, or simply a militant vegan. We get it. You don't eat meat. Brava! Well done, you! However, all those pigs and cows you're bleating on about saving, and how they ought to be cherished? Believe me - they'd kill you in a heartbeat, and not think twice about it. Pigs would also consume you. Completely. Bones, too.
Please go milk an almond, eh? I'm sure you'll feel a lot happier when you have some protein in your system. But apart from that, why don't you keep your weird assumptions about those of us who have empathy for a woman who is grieving the loss of her family's cat, to yourself? Y'know, shut away inside that empty shell of a militant brain of yours, as opposed to leaping out onto the 'net. Then I dare say we'll all be happier.
(OP, I am so sorry!)