A dog or cat’s passing can stir up particularly complicated emotions. Here’s how to cope My first real pet was an auburn tabby named Lauren with a pinched face and a puffy tail. I picked her up in September 2021, and by the time we got to my house 30 minutes later, I was completely in love.
The immediacy - and intensity - of how I felt about her was surprising and unfamiliar. And so was the emptiness that came with losing her only seven months later. (She was barely 1 year old and had developed FIP, a deadly strain of feline coronavirus that typically affects young cats.
) “When you lose anybody, pet or human, that you’re really close to, it can feel like the world is ending,” says Jennifer Golbeck, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland and researcher of human-animal bonds. “Most people think of their pets as family members. .
.. Sometimes, they consider their relationships with their dogs closer than their relationships with most of their family members.
It’s actually a really profound relationship, and when we lose them, our psychological needs are to grieve them in the same way we would grieve any relationship that is that profound.” When we adopt pets, we know we’re entering a relationship that will, most likely, end in loss. But for many people, pet grief can nonetheless be surprisingly devastating when it happens.
Research shows that grief following the loss of a pet can be comparable to losing a person and, in some cases, even more .