A 36-year-old woman from the Amroha district in Uttar Pradesh refused to bury her cat and kept it close to her for three days hoping it would return to life before taking her own life, her family told said on Monday.
The woman had allegedly hung herself in Mohalla Kot Hasanpur on Saturday night. The woman was mentally unwell and had undergone treatment for her mental illness in Moradabad, news agency PTI cited police.
“My daughter simply loved Titu (cat). On Wednesday night at around 10 pm, Titu’s tongue turned blackish and after about 45 minutes, it died,” the report quoted the woman’s mother.
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She also clarified that her daughter had not given any hint of ending her life. The bereaved family have decided that they will no longer keep any cat as a pet.
‘Raised cat like her own child’
The woman’s family members said that she had adopted the cat nearly two years ago and raised it “like her own child”. When the cat died, she became grief-stricken, they said.
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“She had a belief that her cat will come back to life. I told her that almost three days have passed, and now it’s time to bury the body, but she did not give any reply. She remained quiet and calm,” her mother said.
One of the family’s neighbours said that he had seen the cat mostly staying with the woman. He claimed that eight-nine years ago the woman had gotten married but the marriage had not lasted more than a few days, due to which “an emptiness may have entered her life.”
After the woman’s death, the cat was finally buried in the presence of the police.
Pradeep Khatri, a Lucknow-based clinical psychologist, said that for people like the deceased, who live isolated lives, pets are a support system.
“She was probably suffering from psychotic illness, which is a mental illness that involves a loss of contact with reality. People with psychotic disorders may have difficulty distinguishing between reality and their perceptions,” Khatri said, as quoted by PTI.
“People with psychotic illness do not want anybody to enter their world. When her pet cat died, she could not bear that emptiness, due to which she committed suicide,” he added.
Discussing suicides can be triggering for some. However, suicides are preventable. A few major suicide prevention helpline numbers in India are 011-23389090 from Sumaitri (Delhi-based) and 044-24640050 from Sneha Foundation (Chennai-based).