My Take | Great comic shows how to mourn the death of our beloved pets

Russell Brand’s cat died recently. Our hedgehog, Scrubber, passed away in his sleep two days ago. My wife is still terribly upset. So, we ended up listening to the British comedian pouring his heart out about his beloved Morrissey on YouTube. It was strangely comforting, even philosophically so.

“The death of my beloved cat, Morrissey, reached deep inside me and affected me viscerally,” Brand said. “Morrissey was due to be put down due to renal failure. Watching his slow senescence was a sad thing to endure.” Scrubber also died from kidney failure. For some reason, over the years, most of our pets, cats, dogs and now a hedgehog, died from the same thing.

I don’t usually pay attention to Brand. Years ago, during the global financial crisis, he suddenly discovered the world of sociology, economics and Marxist revolutionary thought, and proceeded to tell everyone about it.

Most people just rolled their eyes. Still, there was no denying he was and still is a very funny man.

I know it may be seen as self-indulgent to mourn our pets publicly in the middle of a global pandemic, when so many people have lost their lives and families their loved ones. But while you can feel compassion for the suffering of those you don’t know, it’s different when you are seeing the dying pain of those you love when you can do nothing about it.

“This cat, my cat, I had him for 16 years,” Brand said. “This cat traversed oceans with me and lived with me in maybe 10 or 15 houses. He was there on my laps when I watched myself as the main story on the news: ‘Russell Brand destroys the BBC’.”