The death of a pet can now be one of the most expensive times for needy owners, particularly if they live in an apartment without a garden or in a rental property. When my beloved hamster Maisie died, I faced the trauma of figuring out what to do with her body. The experience was a painful gamble. However, it’s definitely not something I deal with alone. Online fundraising sites are filled with grieving pet owners relying on the kindness of strangers. Freya Liberty from Manchester had her dog cremated and was able to collect her ashes after raising £600 on JustGiving. Mabel was the oldest resident of Manchester and Cheshire Dogs Home when Freya decided to adopt her. She knew Mabel’s seniority would mean additional health costs, but it was something Freya had prepared for financially. However, six months later, her pet insurance company canceled Mabel’s policy, saying it did not insure American Akitas. Other insurers quoted Freya premiums at around £120 a month due to Mabel’s age. It was cheaper for Freya to pay Mabel’s medical bills out of her own pocket. Freya Liberty’s insurer told her it no longer covered American Akitas, like her rescue dog Mabel. Photo: Freya Liberty However, Freya could not have predicted that the cost of living crisis coincided with Mabel’s sleepover. “We wouldn’t have done the fundraiser if it weren’t for the energy bill increase in April,” he says. The cost included a £250 cremation plus a £190 vet bill and some smaller charges for memorabilia such as foot prints. Freya put all she could on a credit card but was £100 short. She decided to set up a JustGiving page to see if family and friends would contribute. “Shortly before I created the page, I felt like I had personally failed my amazing dog, who had kept me going throughout the pandemic. It was my ultimate comfort. I felt awful sitting there thinking if we could cremate her,” he says. The page ended up raising six times the projected amount. The £100 Freya used from the fundraiser allowed her to bring Mabel’s ashes home. It gave Freya time to properly mourn her pet before scattering her ashes on the Welsh coast – a place Mabel particularly enjoyed. The remaining £500 went to Manchester and Cheshire Dogs Home. My hamster Maisie came into my life as an affordable pet. I bought her from a local pet shop in Hackney, East London, for £12. The cost of maintaining it was never a concern. However, as she breathed her last at the end of last year, I was struck by the potential cost of disposing of her body. I was living in a rented one bedroom flat in London with no garden. Molly Raycraft bought her hamster Maisie from a local pet shop in Hackney for £12. Photo: Molly Raycraft A round of local vets showed it would cost £125 and up to cremate an animal weighing under 1kg like Maisie. A burial in one of London’s dedicated pet cemeteries was another option, but ran from £320 upwards. Taxidermy – not an option I wanted to consider – wasn’t any cheaper, totaling £175 and up. Burying a dead pet in a public park or forest has been a common conclusion among the many people on Internet forums facing the same dilemma. However, this is illegal and carries the risk of a £5,000 fine. A more painful option was to simply dispose of the body, costing nothing but conjuring up the cruel images of foxes mauling the corpse of a beloved family member. A low-cost and time-sensitive decision had to be made. Maisie placed in an iPhone box next to her favorite sample of an old toilet. I said my goodbyes and put her coffin, wrapped in Sainsbury’s carrier bags, into my food-less freezer-turned-morgue. It gave me time to make cheaper arrangements. Eventually, Maisie was taken to my mother’s house, where she was laid to rest in a picturesque Kentish garden with the corpses of about 30 rodents. My freezer and delayed burial approach is a less practical option for people with older pets, forcing their hand to pay cremation fees. Mabel’s story is one of the rare fundraisers that has a positive outcome. Many pet cremation donation pages have no contributions. Owners are unable to collect the ashes, leaving them with a painful sense of letting their pet down in the wake of the current crisis. “We’ve seen an increase in this area recently,” says Diane James, the head of the pet bereavement service at Blue Cross. The pet charity has set up several pet food banks and offers low-cost and free veterinary care at its animal hospitals, which includes cremation if the pet has been treated on site. The veterinary world is also feeling the pressure. “A veterinary business is not very profitable and comes with a lot of pressure, which is why larger companies take over practices rather than operate independently,” says Anna Foreman, the in-house veterinarian at Everypaw Pet Insurance. Amidst this general increase in industry prices, there have been cases of exploitative overpricing and negligence. Some owners report that, having paid for cremations, they have ended up with pets being wrapped in crematoriums and the ashes being returned containing a residue preparation. But even the majority of crematoria that are doing their best to minimize their profit margins to help bereaved customers have been forced to raise their prices to stay afloat amid skyrocketing energy bills. Owners have been plunged into financial difficulties that could not have been foreseen at the beginning of their pets’ lives “My fuel prices have doubled,” says Sue Hemmings, undertaker at Pets At Rest on the Isle of Wight and a member of the Association of Private Pet Cemeteries and Crematoriums. “Obviously, our biggest expense is the cost of natural gas because that’s how we cremate the animals. All my suppliers have increased their prices, from flowers and cardboard boxes to tissues, caskets and shipping. Nothing has remained at the same price as it was last year.” Hemmings offers payment plans, which have seen people pay as little as £5 a week from their universal credit to pay for private cremation. It enables them to bring their beloved pet home. Shared cremation is a cheaper option, but fewer choose it as the ashes are not returned. The reality is that many pet owners have been plunged into financial difficulties that could not have been foreseen at the beginning of their pets’ lives. Demand for pet-friendly rental properties rose by 120% between July 2020 and July 2021, reflecting a spike in pet ownership during the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from property website Rightmove. The government has responded by issuing a model tenancy agreement, which discourages blanket bans on pets. It is expected to be supported by more mandatory measures in the tenant reform bill in spring 2023, which will mean more pets in rents. However, a combination of reduced access to affordable burial and cremation options, and the rising cost of living, means that the death of a pet can, for some, cause mounting debt and some difficult decisions.
