Cat holders usually feel grieve when their pets certainly strive for leaving their home before death. What moves them and what do they feel in last moment?..
"Once a cat went out to come back never again. He felt inexorable approach of death and prepared to meet it, as it should be for wild creatures - all alone. He didn't want to die smelling human odor and hearing human voice. And, until death does its' final, quick and sudden hit, he crawls with his last ounce there, where proud and wild animal should die - not on soft pillows but in lonely and quiet place where he could leave this cruel world in dignity".
Aldan Devout, Cats
People wonder and don't understand why their pets reject possible help when feel that are really seriously ill.
Do their holders with all their love actually mean nothing for cats? Does their leave at this moment prove this once more?
One should not reproach himself. The phenomenon of lonely death is not that new. One of oriental authors as long ago as in 1708 wrote that the peculiar feature of cats was their disappearance from people sight, so that people didn't catch their death glance that is really terrible. Most likely we deal with a kind of enigma. And, for such cases are quite frequent, they represent a typical example of cat behavior. If this was a rare subject, one should think that death finds animal at that very moment when they are far away from home. However this is typical for cats and such a behavior is scarcely may be explained in such way.
To understand cat behavior it's very important to consider the question how the imagine death. All people know that they will die some day and behave themselves according to this. And cats have little idea about their own death and, hence can't foresee it and have no foreboding of it however sick they are.
A touch of disease for a cat as well as for other animals means that there's something wrong with it. If they feel pain they consider that they are attacked. An animal is very difficult to tell one kind of pain from another. If the pain doesn't see the source of danger, then it doesn't know what to defend from. And only two variants left: to run away or hide. If the pain reaches a cat during a walk then its' natural to hide from "aggressor". If it sees a shad or any other shelter it will surely hide there to stay alone and wait until the danger passes by and pain ceases. Cat never dares to go outside while feels the source of pain is still here and is waiting, and hence, stays under the shelter dying alone.
Contrary to numerous assumptions in the moment of death a cats thinks not about feelings of its' masters about just how to defend itself from a terrifying danger that causes so much pain.
Translated by Tatiana Karpova (Moscow)
(MSU, Biology faculture, Dep. zoology and ecology).