How to tell children cat needs to be PTS. Sudden & unexpected.

[boredwfh]

I took our 14 year old cat to an emergency vet appt today as he looked like he’d lost some weight & his breathing was fast & laboured the last few days. I was in shock to be told he has a tumour in his stomach & an irregular heartbeat which is also racing & there is nothing we can do so needs to be PTS.

My SD 17 is in an intense course of therapy this week (1hr a day for 5 days) and I don’t want to de-rail it & I’ve also got my 8 yr old DD who I need to tell as well as the other SD20 whose away at uni. We are due to go on holiday Friday so the vets said they’d reccomend we do it before we go away. When do I tell the children? Especially with the therapy happening. Any advice how to tell each of them?
the cat has had steroid injections & something else to make him more comfortable & is eating & drinking. I’m so upset to think we need to make the decision & go through with it in the next couple of days. Whereas if I was not going away I’d maybe try to keep him a bit longer but maybe that’s me being selfish. The vet was quite adamant that really it’d be kinder to do it sooner.

Surely you just tell your 18/20yo the facts. ‘Harry has gone downhill. The vet has said he can’t get better and we are at the point where it will be a struggle to make him comfortable so he is being put to sleep on Thursday, sorry to be the bearer of such sad news’. For your 8yo, tell them he is suffering, the vet can’t make him better and in this case death is the only possible solution, but he won’t feel any pain, and while this is sad it’s best for Harry.

8yo should be okay with the concept of put to sleep does not equal them being able to die in their sleep, but I’d never use the term with younger kids who may then think them/parents/siblings can fall asleep and be dead.

@HoppingPavlovai was thinking about the 17yr old and her being in therapy this week and really not wanting to de-rail it but doesn’t seem like we have a choice. Do I tell her after Thursdays session at midday then take the cat or do I tell her after today’s session. Is before better so she could talk about it in that session. But then I don’t want the session taken up by the car & not the things she needs to talk about.

Personally, I’d tell them after the Thursday session and then take cat in Thursday afternoon. Maybe they’d want to come? I’ve never seen a bad animal death when pts personally, so would not worry about taking someone that age but irrespective, you can still bring him/her (sorry don’t know name) home after for final goodbyes - just ‘stage’ them somewhat before they go into rigor and have with a nice thick soft blanket underneath so that aspect isn’t so obvious. I think it provides a level of closure, but everyone is different.

I would tell DS17 as soon as you can, to give her the opportunity to talk about it in today's therapy session. The loss of a much loved family member is a big event, both the run-up to it and the after-effects (on both the one having therapy and what they see happening to those around them.) There are different forms of therapy and counselling, but anything that's client-centred will have a focus on what the client wants to look at, including the loss of a pet. So don't worry about derailing your SD's session; a good therapist will be able to handle things that come up during the treatment. They'll know that real people aren't preserved in amber and life continues to happen.

Having said what I did, this makes sense too. We had our cat pts because of cancer when it was advanced, but she was still at the eating and drinking stage, and things didn't look absolutely desperate. But we knew they'd get that way if we didn't take steps to spare her from it and we'd suffer with her. We gave her plenty of her favourite tuna, then took her in. It was low-tech (blanket, shaver to remove hair and a syringe) and very dignified and humane. I wouldn't mind an end like that myself.

We had similar with our ten year old girl last year, and while we were offered treatment to prolong her life (chemo) it wouldn’t have cured her, so we let her go the following week. It was heartbreaking as she was completely “well” other than the massive tumour in her stomach - eating, running about, just her normal self. We had her sleep in our bed (which she usually didn’t get because she was a pest) for a week, she had all her favourite foods, and the day before she went to the vet she caught a mouse.

At the vet she fell asleep with me holding her and us telling her how much we loved her.

I’m not sure I’d have coped as a teen tbh, but it was a gentle and dignified process. We had a private cremation and have her ashes in a nice urn next to a lovely framed photo on the hearth. Not for everyone but I got the vet to take her paw prints and had one tattooed on my arm a few weeks later. 🐾