Hello. One of mom's cats has passed. What is the best way to tell her? She has dementia and memory loss. Should I not bring it up. Things are already rough with her desire to return home.
The neighbor put him in the freezer, I live long distance and have to figure out what to do with him. He was a sweet kitty.
The best way to tell someone with dementia the truth is to tell them the truth.
A life long lived generally recognizes death.
There will, of course, be mourning, which is normal.
It is also, in many areas, not against the law to dig a hole in the backyard to bury the cat, should the elder wish to have this done.
I wouldn’t bring up the cats death at all.
Depending on how things go, you could always have sweet kitty cremated. There are memorials that can be made out of pets' ashes, even jewelry mom could wear. I don't think the jewelry is such a great idea in a dementia patient's case because it could get eaten or thrown out when she doesn't recall what it is, but I'm mentioning it anyway because it is available.
I wish you luck in dealing with this!
You can have the cat cremated in a group cremation with other pets it’s cheaper in a group . Check with the vet .
Or if you want to be more eco friendly , aquamation is about $300 for a pet under 30 lbs , which is more expensive than cremation by fire .
Tell the neighbor to burry the cat. (or whatever is legal in your area)
gotta bring this up.
If mom is in a facility (Memory Care or Skilled Nursing) you might want to begin the process of removing any other animals she has and either contacting a shelter or ask the neighbor if they will take them.
Then you have to begin clearing out the house so it can be sold to pay for her care. (if no one else is living there)
She doesn't have the ability to process information logically, sensibly, realistically. Trying to explain anything to a person with dementia will only increase their anxiety and confusion and distress her.
The news about the cat will upset her for no reason, at this point.
Tell the neighbor to take care of the kitty and make arrangements to rehome the rest and start settling moms house.
The only reason I haven’t brought both animals to visit is that the cat knows how to open the type of doors they have and would be out visiting the rest of the facility as soon as he was bored with checking out her room! Knowing him, he’d figure out how to use the fob to get out of the locked area all together! Her dog has doggie dementia and would be a candidate for doggie memory care himself.
I keep a 3 ring binder called a memory book with family and pet pictures in it. I use MS Word to make each page with a picture and their name in large bold type. If someone was into scrapbooking it would make it prettier, but that doesn't seem to matter.
"I just wanted to add a follow up to my earlier comments. Today I had to put my mother’s dog down. He had spent the night in an emergency hospital and it was clear that his organs were finally shutting down. He was ancient and I swear his first owner must have been back when humans lived in caves. I brought her to visit him and say goodbye for about an hour then a friend took her to her favorite restaurant while I stayed with him as he was put to sleep. She called me four times the day before thinking he had died but at that point he was home and acting normal so I assured her he was doing fine. About an hour or two after the last call he came out and collapsed so that is when I took him to emergency. I had no idea how she would react since they were very close and I was really worried. He was comfortable enough that we could wait until morning since she does sundown. She was upset but she saw that he was not going to recover and she handled it better than I expected. That doesn’t mean that in the future it won’t hit her though, I will just have to handle that when it happens. Her calls yesterday actually kind of freaked me out when he did collapse and though I knew the time was right I was stressing from worry about her. In the end I think she had an easier day than I did! Who knows what the coming days and weeks will bring, I hope she will mix him in with the past dogs she gets mixed up about. I hope this response makes sense, I am ready to sleep for a month after dealing with it all. Had he simply been my dog it would have been much easier!i"