I just celebrated my 12th anniversary with the cat. Pip came to me via a rescue organisation in 2013.
She was silver and grey with absurdly enormous ears and had been found abandoned in a bag with her siblings. Over these 12 years she’s grown into the ears, and has become accustomed to a life that belies her humble beginnings.
Pip has her own electric blanket. She enjoys a rotation of her preferred foods, because naturally as soon as she appears to enjoy a pouch of tuna chunks in gravy and I enthusiastically buy a box of eight, she then decides it’s poison and I have to move on to something else.
Every winter she commandeers a rather nice pouffe (a gift from my mother to me, not Pip) and camps out in front of the radiator. Even on days when the heating isn’t really necessary, I leave it on so as not to draw her ire. It’s safe to say she’s spoiled rotten and I have nobody to blame but myself.
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If I’m completely honest I never imagined she’d still be with me in 2025. When Pip first came home with me I was living in Stoneybatter in Dublin 7.
Missing cat posters were so commonplace that we used to joke that there must have been an underground 101 Dalmatians-style outfit in the area, lifting pets and turning them into those fur shrugs beloved by winter wedding guests.
Indeed, Pip’s predecessor Steve the Cat vanished from the mean streets of Stoneybatter in early 2013. He had been accidentally locked out on a very rainy St Patrick’s Day and never returned.
I searched for weeks and added his poster to the others on the lamp-posts but in the end had to tell myself that he’d taken a fancy to someone else’s couch and snack offerings and decided to move. I couldn’t dwell too long on the thought of Steve suffering somewhere, injured or sick.
As Pip gets older I’ve started to consider the end of her life. She could, of course, have eight or more years in her, especially if she continues to live in the lap of luxury.
Pets bring such comfort and joy into so many lives, but the double edge of the sword is the relative brevity of their lives. Cats, at least, can live into their twenties and, no matter how pampered, maintain an air of aloof independence. We cycled through several cats during my childhood. Many of them fell victim to the rural environment.
[ I’m begging you, if someone loses a pet, do not ask: ‘Will you get another one?’Opens in new window ]
There were a few road deaths, and one particularly gruesome encounter with a combine harvester. I can still remember happening upon the slices of poor Cuddles in the field behind our house.
It was the loss of Chieftain, a 14-year-old Labrador, that sticks with me most. He was a good age and gone doddery with it. It was agreed that he should be sent off into a peaceful sleep by the vet. He was never replaced. He was irreplaceable.
I remember the family coming home from school and work one day to find my ageing grandmother, who’d left the gas burner on the cooker pumping noxious fumes into the house. My dad, in true “take my mother-in-law, please” fashion, told her that she “could have killed the dog”. Never mind her own wellbeing.
I’d love a dog of my own but before I’ve even embarked on the journey I’ve already started to dread this future pet’s demise. An acquaintance of mine has an ageing dog who is truly his best friend and the tent-pole of his mental health support.
I worry about the pet’s imminent downhill trajectory. I don’t know this person well enough to suggest bringing in a backup dog in advance. Is a backup dog even a good idea? What if old dog and new dog don’t get on? What if they get on too well and when old dog dies, new dog is heartbroken?
I read a headline recently about former NFL star Tom Brady cloning his pet dog. Barbra Streisand has famously done the same. These procedures cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and what you’re getting is a twin of your pet, not the same animal.
To me it’s a bizarre move when there are so many dogs in rescues desperate for a home. But then, how much would you pay if you could ensure that your cat or dog lives as long as you do?
Although, keeping Pip for another 40 years in the manner to which she has become accustomed would bankrupt me.
