Somebody will say it within a day or two, and they will not mean any harm by it. It was only a hamster. You can get another rabbit. At least it was not the dog. The remark lands badly because the grief underneath it is real, and being told that it should not be tends to make a person stop talking about it altogether. Heavenly Pastures is a family run business handling pet cremations from a single crematorium, and this page is about Crosby small pet cremations and about the loss that goes with them, which is treated here as an ordinary bereavement rather than a minor one.
The Grief Nobody Gives You Permission For
Small animals occupy a peculiar position. They are cheap to replace, they were never expected to last long, and the world has decided in advance how much they were worth. None of that has any bearing on what the house feels like at seven in the morning when nothing needs feeding. People who have lost both a dog and a rabbit will often say the rabbit was harder, and then apologise for saying so. There is nothing to apologise for. Attachment is not calculated by weight.
Where the Work Is Actually Carried Out
We hold no branch, office or crematorium in Crosby, nor anywhere else along the Sefton coast. One crematorium does everything and it stands at Burscough, near Ormskirk in West Lancashire. For a Crosby household that means somebody drives out and collects your animal from the house, which is how nearly every family here arranges it. Carrying your animal over to Burscough yourself is an equally normal choice, and with a very small animal it is one that plenty of owners find they would rather make. Stating this outright matters, because a page reading as though there were a local crematorium once caused a family genuine distress.
Why the Attachment Is Frequently the Stronger One
A rabbit or a guinea pig kept indoors is handled several times a day, every day, by the same pair of hands. There is a routine built around them that nobody else in the household shares. Birds are worse again in this respect, because a bird that talks becomes a presence in the room in a way people struggle to describe afterwards without feeling foolish. The relationship is small in scale and enormous in frequency, and frequency is what the mind misses.
The Hutch That Is Still in the Corner
Nobody tells you what to do about the cage. It sits there with the water bottle still clipped on, and moving it feels premature while leaving it feels worse. There is no correct interval. Some people strip it the same afternoon because the sight of it is unbearable, others leave it a fortnight, and both are ordinary. What is worth avoiding is deciding under pressure from somebody else who wants the space back. If there is a second animal still living in it, that changes matters entirely and is worth a separate conversation.
Sandy Ground Near the Shore and Why Burial Often Disappoints
Plenty of families here bury a small animal in the garden, and there is nothing wrong with the instinct. It is worth knowing what the ground does first. Much of Crosby sits on sand rather than clay, particularly on the seaward side towards Blundellsands, and sand does not hold a small grave the way people assume it will. Shallow burials in light soil get disturbed, most often by foxes, and finding that out some weeks later is a good deal worse than the original loss. The older terraces further in have yards rather than gardens, which settles the question before it is asked. Cremation is not a lesser option here. For a great many households it is simply the one that lasts.
What Happens to a Very Small Animal
The question owners most want to ask, and most often do not, is whether there will be anything left. There will. Our small pets individual cremation service covers rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rats, mice, ferrets, chinchillas, birds and reptiles, and it is run with the same procedures used for a large dog rather than a simplified version of them. Nobody here regards a hamster as a lesser piece of work.
The Two Choices and What Each One Returns
An individual cremation service means your animal alone, identified from the point of collection through to the moment their ashes are handed back to you in person. A communal cremation service means your animal cremated in company with others, and no ashes coming back to any household afterwards. With small animals that second point catches people out more than it should, because the assumption is that ashes always come back as a matter of course. They do not, and the difference is worth being clear about before anything is agreed.
When the Animal Belonged to a Child
Small pets are very often a child’s animal, bought precisely because the commitment looked manageable, and their death is frequently a child’s first encounter with death of any kind. Children tend to want to know the mechanics, which adults find uncomfortable and children find steadying. Being told plainly what happens, and knowing that a proper arrangement was made rather than a bin bag and a shrug, carries considerably more weight with them than most parents expect.
What Decides the Figure
Three things. Which of the two services you choose, the weight band the animal falls into, which for small pets is the lowest one, and a collection band set against how far a driver has to come out from Burscough. Anything arranged outside the standard weekday hours adds to it. Current figures sit on the pet cremation price list, which is kept accurate rather than written into an article and forgotten.
Knowing That What Comes Back Is Yours
This is asked more anxiously about small animals than about any other kind, and the anxiety is understandable. How each animal is identified throughout, and the checks behind that, are set out on our our standards page. It is a better answer than being asked to take somebody’s word for it.
Checking Where We Travel
The whole of the Sefton coast is on the round, so a Crosby address raises no question. Everywhere else is listed on the areas we cover page, which helps if you are answering the same questions on behalf of somebody living further afield.
Somewhere to Put a Photograph
Whenever it suits you, and there is no expectation attached to it, a picture of your animal can go into the Remembrance section of this site with whatever you want written beside it. A fair number of the entries there are rabbits and birds, which is worth seeing if you have been made to feel your own grief was disproportionate.
Talking to Somebody
Ring 01704 776976 and ask anything you need to, including whether it is worth arranging at all, because people ask that about small animals and the answer is that it is entirely your decision and nobody here will push you either way. If writing suits you better, our contact form reaches the same office and gets a reply.