About the emotional bond with your pet, a memoriam for Birgit

This time you will not read a rational article about nutritional supplements for humans or pets, but the life story of our beloved pet, Birgit or ‘little cat’ who passed away last Friday.

Last Friday, December 13, was one of the saddest days of my life when I was forced to say goodbye to our beloved little four-legged friend. Around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, her vet gave our beloved black and white cat Birgit the saving injection so that she could exchange the temporary for the eternal life.

Birgit was born in Tiel at the local animal shelter on April 4, 2003 and was lovingly adopted shortly afterwards by Fokke de Vries, an old friend of mine.
Fokke was looking for a playmate for Frouke, his other cat, so he and his friend picked up Birgit from the shelter. They lived together for a short but happy time in Kerk-Avezaath near Tiel.
She was very happy there because Fokke had a cheerful garden where birds liked to come in the summer and from a bench she had a view of a small pond with fish and the flowers around it.

But Fokke, who was worried about his health and the fact that the house he lived in would not be suitable for him to live to an old age, decided to move to Arnhem after his early retirement, where he bought a nice house on the Apeldoornseweg, which is a fairly busy main road.
As a result, it was no longer possible for his cats to go outside safely. While his other cat did not care much about going outside, “little” young Birgit wasted away because she missed the freedom to walk outside and bask in the sun on the bench in their garden.

That's why Fokke asked me in 2006, when we had set up our webshop PasioIngredients.com just a year before , whether we might be interested in becoming “adoptive parents” of a small cat.

About our other pets

In my youth, my parents and grandparents owned several “characters” , that is quirky pets who gave their caretakers a lot of love in their own way until old age.
Before my (step)father Jan came into our lives, he owned Pasja, a funny cross between a Keeshond and a shepherd. My mother and I took care of Natscha, a quirky sometimes temperamental miniature poodle, who showed her teeth to anyone she distrusted or simply because she had set her heart on a toy or a tree branch she wanted to play with.

Although the dogs had completely different characters, Natscha and Pasja got along quite well. How things ended with these dogs, I may explain in another article if our readers would like to know more, but to cut things short, Yvana and I had not planned to take in another pet in 2006.
In fact, I didn't really want to commit myself to an animal anymore and then have to say goodbye later with a heavy heart... but sometimes life takes a different turn.

Because of her completely different background as the daughter of a dairy farmer, Yvana had a different understanding of "pets" or "companion animals" as they are also called. After all, it is not wise to become too emotionally attached if you know that you will have to say goodbye again in a relatively short period of time.
Even cats and dogs often have a more functional role on a farm, such as hunting mice and guarding the yard.
Moreover, these animals did not enter the living apartments of the farm, but slept in the stable or hayloft.

With cats that could partly feed themselves with mice and a dog that could walk itself and go wherever it wanted, there was much less opportunity to build a close bond with such animals. For me it was quite different, I call pets “life companions” with four legs.

How Gitte entered our lives

Anyway, in April 2006 Fokke was standing at our door with the young Birgit in a carrier basket, Yvana and I were really .. curious. After all, I had said to Fokke: "come over and if your little cat also accepts us as 'adoptive parents' then she can stay and of course you can come and visit her as often as you want. "

Unfortunately, the latter did not happen very often. Sadly enough, Fokke passed away 2 years ago in April 2022 at the age of 81 and he no longer knew that we had been lovingly caring for Birgit as best we could all that time.

Still, Fokke kept a soft spot for Gitte, because when we had occasional telephone contact he always asked how she was doing. This autumn I wanted to visit him at his home address, but I found a different nameplate, not knowing of his death.

On that fateful day in April 2006, Fokke opened the carrier, whereupon “little” Birgit looked at us and then explored our house, her new home.
She almost immediately walked upstairs. Curiously, I followed her to see what was happening and spoke to her kneeling on hands and knees: “so you are little cat”, whereupon she gave me a headbutt and lick my hand. It was a kind of love at first sight. I will never forget that moment, as long as I may live.
That… also makes the farewell so hard and even now, while writing this piece, which by no means does justice to this sweet creature, I shed a few tears every now and then.

Gitte had an eventful but adventurous life, first with Fokke and later with us. We were able to enjoy her and her company over the past 18 years.

Even now I realize that I have sometimes fallen short as a caregiver. Unfortunately, I can't turn back time, no matter how much I would like to. We should have cuddled her more often, made our garden a bit more animal-friendly, but our little Birgit never complained and was easily satisfied.
She never asked for much special attention, the attention she got from us was enough for her.

She liked to sleep in between us, and would, as soon as we woke up, crawl towards us to be petted or give headbutts.
Whenever I was feeling sick in bed, she would come and comfort me. She did the same when Yvana wasn't feeling well. Just as I had promised Yvana on our wedding day in September 2009 to take care of her 'in sickness and in health', I had promised the same to Gitte and so it happened.

Her end of life

Last Friday, a contented and happy life came to an end. A life that, as far as I and she are concerned, could have lasted much longer if that had been possible.
And who knows, maybe in the future, thanks to new medical techniques such as stem cell therapy, this will also be possible for pets to achieve a better quality of life at an older age.

Coincidentally, I suddenly fell quite ill last week, suffering from dizziness and severe headaches, which I suspected to be the result of acute food poisoning. After contacting the GP, an ambulance with a nurse and a paramedic even came to my house, where they only noticed that my hypotension was too high.

Despite my own illness, all I could think about was the worries I had for Gitte, who had suddenly stopped eating a few days before. By the next evening, I had recovered just as suddenly as I had become ill.
But for our Gitte, the end was near. She was not even tempted by the tastiest morsel from the fishmonger or by liquid food that I squirted into her mouth with a syringe. That Friday she had become so weak she was no longer able to walk to the litter box, while she had continued to do so until just a day before.

When I took her to the vet on Friday afternoon, the vet determined that she had probably recently suffered a brain hemorrhage.
Instead of prolonging her suffering, we decided the time had come to say goodbye. With much sadness and tears in my eyes, I cuddled her until her heart stopped beating… I could have screamed, a silent scream. “Not again, not again.”

The love that Birgit had in her and that I hope we have given back to her, will give her a place in animal heaven, where I hope to see her again when my time has come, together with all those other beloved pets that I have met in my life and will still meet. Her earthly existence passed into eternal life last Friday, but her love is still palpable. I will miss you Birgit, Gitte our ‘little cat’. For now, she is already appearing in my dreams, just like my former pets.