Outrage after reclusive cat's ashes dumped in 'mass grave'

A Swedish ex-cat owner is furious that her reclusive pet’s ashes were not buried in a private grave, but were rather sent to a mass burial plot in Malmö following a document mix-up. “This is so wrong, no one is taking responsibility and I’ve been crying an awful lot,” the cat’s owner Erika Rosengren said. Rosengren's 11-year-old feline, Pippi, died on July 6th, six weeks after veterinarians noticed she had a tumour.

Deeply saddened, Rosengren bought a private plot of land near her home in Klippan, southern Sweden. “Pippi didn’t like other animals – she didn’t even like our dog – so I arranged a completely new patch of land in the corner of the cemetery. I wanted her to be alone in death as she enjoyed being in life,” said Rosengren. However, the grieving cat-lover was told she would have to wait a few weeks before she could collect the cat’s ashes. A few weeks turned into a few months, and when the package finally arrived, there was something fishy about the urn.



According to Rosengren, the urn contained too much ash for a cat of Pippi's size and the wrong name was on the documents. Much to her horror, Rosengren learned the ashes were not Pippi’s – the vets had mixed up the papers. “I was back at square one again and the tears came back just as much as when Pippi died,” Rosengren said. Realizing their mistake, the vets informed the distraught woman that her cat had in fact been buried in Malmö in an animal cemetery together with some 10,000 other animals.

“It’s terrible to imagine. The worst thing is that I’ve looked around online and found out that this kind of thing has happened before. Not in Klippan, but around Sweden. It even happens with people,” she said. Although Rosengren is still saddened by the incident, she is not letting go just yet, and has reported the incident to Sweden's veterinary medical responsibility board (Ansvarsnämnden för djurens hälso- och sjukvård). “No one is admitting to it, so I have written a report – but judging by how the whole thing has gone so far, I doubt anything will come of it,” she said.