There is a hierarchy in how the world treats animal death, and nobody admits to it but everybody obeys it. A dog gets sympathy. A cat gets sympathy. A hamster gets a joke about the cost of a new one. Families arranging animal cremations Ormskirk often ring us slightly braced, ready to be told the creature they lost does not really warrant this. Nobody here will say that. Heavenly Pastures is a family run business providing pet cremations for every kind of animal a household keeps.
The Losses People Apologise For
We take calls that begin with an apology more often than you would think. It is only a rabbit. I know it sounds silly, but it was a rat. She was just a hen. In every case the animal in question had a name, a personality the household could describe in detail, and a place in the daily routine that has now got a hole in it. The apology is not about the animal. It is about anticipating that somebody will find the grief disproportionate, which is a thing people learn to expect because it keeps happening to them.
Why the Hierarchy Exists and Why It Is Wrong
Grief tends to follow how much of your attention an animal occupied, not how large or long lived it was. A hamster handled every evening for two years by a child who talked to it about school occupies a great deal of attention. A rat who came when called, and rats do, occupies more still. Meanwhile plenty of dogs are perfectly loved and left largely to themselves. Size is simply a poor predictor of attachment, which is why the ranking people apply to these losses so often fails to match what they actually feel.
What We Will Take
Anything a household kept as a companion. Rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice, gerbils, hamsters, ferrets, chinchillas, birds of every size, tortoises, lizards, snakes, and hens who long ago stopped being livestock and started being pets with names. Our small pets individual cremation service covers all of it, and nobody at this end raises an eyebrow at any of it. If you are unsure whether something qualifies, ring and ask, because the answer is nearly always yes.
What Comes Back, Whatever the Animal
An individual cremation service means your animal is cremated on their own, tracked as themselves throughout, and their ashes returned to you in person. A communal cremation service means cremation alongside others with nothing coming back to anybody. The rules are identical whether the animal weighed forty kilos or forty grams. Owners of very small animals sometimes assume individual is not offered to them, or that there would be nothing left to return. Both assumptions are wrong, and it is a question worth asking on the phone rather than deciding for yourself.
Children and the Animals They Chose
Small animals are frequently a child’s animal, bought or adopted at their asking and looked after by them. That makes the death a child’s bereavement, often their first, and the temptation to minimise it because the creature was small is a mistake families tend to regret. Children generally cope well with plain facts and badly with vagueness. Being told the animal will be cremated, that this is something the household has deliberately arranged, and that they can see them beforehand if they want to, gives a child something solid to hold on to.
Where the Crematorium Is
Heavenly Pastures has no branch, unit or crematorium in Ormskirk itself. The crematorium is at Burscough, which is near enough that most Ormskirk households are surprised when they hear how short the journey is, and that closeness makes both arrangements easy. We can come out and collect from your home, or you can bring your animal to us, which for a small pet in a shoebox many families find they would rather do themselves. The Ormskirk pet cremations page covers the local practicalities.
When It Happened Without Warning
Small animals decline fast and hide it well, so households often go from a slightly quiet rabbit to a dead one inside two days. Our page about the cremation service following natural death covers what is actually needed in that first stretch, and it is almost nothing. Somewhere cool and undisturbed is the whole of it. Weekdays we answer from half eight to four, with an out of hours arrangement at an added cost, and nothing needs doing overnight.
The One Left Behind
Where animals lived as a bonded pair, and rabbits and guinea pigs generally do, the survivor matters and matters quickly. Some decline within days of losing their companion. Raise it when you ring and raise it with your vet, because this is one of the few situations where acting soon genuinely changes the outcome for the animal still alive.
What It Costs
Charges follow the service chosen and the size of the animal, with a collection band based on the drive out from Burscough. Smaller animals sit at the lower end, and for many households the figure is a good deal less than they had braced for. Current prices are on the pet cremation price list.
Somewhere Their Name Is Written Down
For a loss other people are not treating seriously, having it recorded somewhere matters more than usual. The Remembrance section of this site takes a photograph and whatever you want to say, and there are hens, rats and lizards among the dogs there.
Ringing Us
Call 01704 776976 and describe your animal without prefacing it with an apology. If writing suits you better, the contact form reaches the same office. Nothing about asking obliges you to go further.