I had a 10 year old cat, Cubz. I bought him a few months after Gina and I were married, along with his sister Sabi. They were both silver Tabbies, and were two of the most beautiful cats I have ever come across, not just because of the way they looked, but their personalities. I have to be honest, I was not that bothered about pets. But because Gina is passionate about animals, I thought getting a cat (or two in our case) was the least I could do, given she’d just married me!

Unfortunately, Sabi was run over and killed when she was 11 months old. It was an accident, a quirk of circumstance. But I was devastated, this from someone who wasn’t that bothered about pets, because it didn’t seem fair. Why had such a beautiful being had her life terminated so shortly?

Fast forward another 9 years… we’ve sadly had to have Sabi’s brother put down. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour a couple of months ago, and whilst we wanted to see whether it would stabilise, it has just got worse. Surgery wasn’t an option, as it would have meant amputating his front leg, and as an outdoor tom boy, going down that route wasn’t an option, as he would have ended up leading a horrible existence.

After discussing it with Gina, we took the very sad decision to end Cubz’s life to end his suffering. This led to the most bizarre conversation I think I have ever had – I had to ring the vets to make an appointment to have Cubz put down. It just felt so unnatural – I mean normally you make appointments for getting your hair cut, a visit to the dentist’s for a check up, but here I was making an appointment to bring the terminate the life of a pet my family and I have loved.

I’ve never had to do this before. Every bit of grief I have experienced has been forced upon me, never had I had to choose to follow this path myself. So do I feel better or worse for having decided to take this decision in my own hands rather than leave it to fate itself?

The experience itself was understandably very emotional. Leaving for the vets in the morning, with Cubz in his cat carrier, and watching Gina and the girls say good bye was odd to say the least. I mean here we all were, knowing this would be the last time they saw him alive. But at least they had that opportunity, and at least they remember him the way he was.

I actually found the process of watching him get put down to actually be ok – it was completely dignified. A couple of injections and then he stopped breathing. As peaceful an end as you could wish for. Given I’d seen his sister Sabi killed by a car, it was so much better to watch him pass away the way I always remembered him. A beautiful tabby cat.

I found this a very humane thing to do. Cubz passed away very peacefully, with complete dignity and in no pain. In this regard, it seems like we end up treating pets more humanely than humans. This blog isn’t supposed to be a pro-euthanasia blog as such, it actually began life as an act of catharsis on my part – it’s just during the course of writing it, it got me thinking about how we deal with people whose suffering from illness is such that they would prefer to end their own lives. And yet this is something denied to them by most countries. Is that right? I mean if animals are allowed to pass away peacefully in this manner, why shouldn’t humans?