Do Cats Grieve?
 

Do Cats Grieve?

I was talking to an acquaintance about cats grieving. What have been your experiences? It seems to depend on the individual cats and how they interact with their owners would be my opinion. My cat Smokey grieved the loss of her long time dog pal Ashes but could not seem to care less about &i#@#%$ a former dog companion.

My Siamese and German Shepherd were raised together and when he passed, she shrank to the size of a skeleton and looked for the shepherd for month on end. We took her to the vet a few times thinking she would die but finally started to gain weight again. One day another shepherd passed by the house and she went crazy trying to get out as we think she must have thought it was him. It was so sad as pets don't understand the same way humans understand. Rocky was just gone.

Do they grieve as in feeling like we do when we grieve? No. Since they have no sense of "self identity" they do not grieve. Since no one who writes about pets is a pet they can only guess at what an animal senses when another person or animal leaves their life. When we assign human characteristics to animals we are only imprinting our own feelings on them.

That does not mean their small brain doesn't sense a loss, but since they can't express it to us verbally in our language then we merely guess at what they "feel". It is still sad to us.

No offense intended, but this seems a little inconsistent to me. :)

Cat Sense by John Bradshaw

Might be a good book for some.

I have had cats for over 25 years and I firmly believe that
they do grieve for a lost companion.

agree

I had 2 cats, Jinx (boy) and Dink (girl) and they loved each other. They were nothing alike - Jinx was a lovey-dovey lap kitty and Dink was very aloof. When Jinx passed, Dink crawled into my lap and cried. After a couple of weeks she stopped crying, but she remained a lap kitty for the rest of her life. No one will ever convince me that cats don't grieve.

Aww. Sad but at the same time beautiful.

Animals have no concept of dying, so I imagine what the feel upon the disappearance of a companion cat is loneliness.