Looks like our cat won't be around much longer. How to break it to my 4yo DD?

[radioactiveimagination]

Just that really. Cat is getting on and has been having seizures. Vet says it's terminal. Dreading telling my DD. She will be heartbroken 😢

My son thinks our cat is on holiday.....

The Blue Cross has some useful stuff on their website.
When our old cat was nearing the end of her life I had a very honest chat with our lovely vet. Vet didn't have her own children but she said Vinocat has been really strong despite all her illnesses but her body isn't strong enough anymore. DD was 7 at the time so understood more and she knew what our cat had been through in the previous two and a half years.

The last Mog book (Goodbye, Mog) is good for explaining it.

On holiday? Don’t do that.
We told our kids that our cat was very ill. Sometimes animals get so sick that the vet can’t make them better and they die.
It’s awful. And hard. But they need to know and be allowed to grieve. Avoid phrases like PTS

I was going to suggest Goodbye Mog as well.

My younger 2 are 4 & 5 and our cat was pts this morning. I told them she was very old and ill and there was nothing more the vet or we could do to make her better, and I was taking her to the vet. The vet would give her something to stop her heart and she would die. I would stay with her and stroke her whilst that happened. It was sad, but this is what we sometimes have to do for our pets. They gave her lots of fuss last night.

They've been o.k about it today, they know I am a bit sad so have been giving me lots of cuddles. My eldest has found it hardest, he's 13 with ASD and, well, she has a special place in his heart. But he's o.k. too.

Thanks for the replies, all good advice. I will certainly get a copy of goodbye mog

Dobbins, sorry about your cat 😢

Thanks. I think the bit between the vet saying it's time to think about pts and actually making the appointment was worse. It's not exactly been a great day(!), but it was so quick and peaceful and I know it was the right time for her.

A friend's 4 year old wondered where a cat he knew had gone. Noone really knew what sort of explanation to give. Then I told him the cat had gone to live in the sky, and that seemed to satisfy him as an answer.

Read Goodbye Mog by yourself before you even think of showing it to a child. Not in the bookshop, though. (don't ask me how I know this).

It's a fantastic book. BUT -

Oh, how you will cry buckets the first time you read it.