What happens to my cat if I die?
Owners agonize that their animals won't understand their absence and will end up sick and starving on the street. When owners do pass away, surviving relatives struggle to rehome bonded pairs together, often unable to keep the animals because they already have pets of their own.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Having surviving family members adopt the pets themselvesDid this help you?
- 2Arranging and paying for transport to out-of-state adoptersDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“My brother's mother-in-law passed away after a long illness, leaving behind two lovely cats. They are female, he thinks they're about five years old, and they are neutered and have all of their shots. The gray one is Lucy, and the black one is Ethyl. They've been together for years and he's trying very hard to keep them together. He'd take them himself, but he already has three”source ↗
“At some point i would die and I would left my cat forever living alone in world and he could never understand why did i left him for eternity alone, let alone he would probably end up on street, starving and ill but unable to die.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 4How to care for an adopted senior dog when you've only had farm dogs
- 228Why does pet grief last for years?
- 10Groomer won't let me stay with my anxious dog