When Cats Die
On grief, pets, and the price of emotional restraint
A pet is not as important to most people who own one; it cannot be compared to a child, a sibling, or a mother. And yet pets are part of the family: they are its loyal, silent members for years.
In Germany, a pet is not legally considered a living being, but an object one owns, a Gegenstand. Losing a pet therefore means, in the German mindset, suffering an economic loss before it is a sentimental one.
This brings us back to that widespread stereotype of the northern European citizen: cold and always detached, emotionally absent and concerned only with their own interests. Feelings treated as a balance sheet of profit and loss, to be entered according to circumstances—tragedy or positive event—under the heading of either losses or gains. A stereotype that is often not entirely unfounded.
Two novels such as Bestiola by Jonathan Bazzi [Mondadori, 2026] or Le chat du jardinier by Thomas Schlesser [Albin Michel, 2026] would probably be unthinkable within the German cultural context. Writing in the first person, and writing with pain about the loss of a cat, does not fit the pragmatic German world. Displaying one’s vulnerability, because that is what it amounts to in the collective imagination, is a system error. Almost like entering the wrong command into the programming of the perfect “ego-system”, generating an unexpected bug.
Emotional sensitivity as a problem rather than a resource.
In nine years in Germany, I have lost two pets: a dog and a cat.
Calling them by name, whatever that name may be, means admitting that one has lost one’s own perfection: there is no room to dwell on it. Neither among friends, nor at work, and sometimes not even within that small circle we call family.
Admitting to pain is nowadays synonymous with weakness. And as such, it is intolerable.
In 2019, shortly before the arrival of the coronavirus and the pandemic, I lost my mother suddenly. A cancer that gave her no chance and took her away within a few months.
In Germany, there is no bereavement leave when you lose someone so important. Just one day, nothing more. There is no paid leave to arrange the funeral, no provision for a moment of reflection in which to process grief. You have to go back to work immediately, to produce, without catching your breath, without complaining.
Without showing yourself to be human and, as such, fragile.
In Schlesser’s novel, the cat’s owner, struck by grief, manages to overcome it through the discovery of classical poetry. In real life, something like that is not permitted. You simply have to hold on, remain cold, and stop feeling.
Italian labour legislation provides days of leave to care for a sick pet and ensure that it receives the treatment necessary to recover. Going to the vet is sufficient reason to miss a day of work without having your salary docked. In Germany, you have to pretend to be sick and lie. The same is true when you lose a father, a mother, a brother, or a sister.
Pretending to be sick when you are not—at least not physically.
Emotional detachment creates monsters, whose psychological consequences are ignored for years, until it is too late and everything collapses. It is no coincidence that statistics show that stress and burnout are among the major risk factors affecting a generation—the generation of the new precariat—which, on the one hand, no longer enjoys the economic security of its fathers and, on the other, still cannot afford to weep freely.
Feelings are seen as a form of social injustice, a luxury only those at the top of the system can afford.
That’s our today.