Vanessa Rodriguez-McQuade said she was heartbroken over the loss of her beloved pet Sandy who was perfectly healthy when she dropped her off at VIP Pets in Sacremento.
This is awful and yet another reminder that pet grooming parlours are potentially dangerous for cats and dogs but particularly cats.
In this instance the death at the parlour has been horribly compounded by VIP Pets cremating Sandy before informing the owner and refusing to hand over the ashes! Bizarre, bonkers and bad. If this is absolutely truthful, VIP Pets are going to be all over the online press and condemned a million times.
The heartbroken owner, Vanessa Rodriguez-McQuade, said her cat was healthy.
VIP Pets, in Sacremento, told Vanessa that Sandy had become unresponsive and died. If this was an innocent death why cremate the cat before informing the owner? This obviously smells.
VIP Pets said that a vet confirmed the cause of death as a heart attack or blood clot. The vet disputes this! The vet said she has never seen the cat.
Of course it is too late now to discover the cause of death, which appears to be what was intended by VIP Pets when they cremated Sandy so quickly.
‘I miss her so much. She was just so hyper, so happy,’ Vanessa told CBS Sacremento.
Let’s for a minute presume that Sandy did die of a heart attack because of the stress of being at the groomers, surely there should be some sort of checks done to confirm a cat is able to cope at a professional groomers. If professional groomers are that stressful, cat owners should avoid them. I am not sure we can trust them.
Source: Cat at VIP Pets dies and staff cremate it BEFORE owner can find out why…
I think an employee took the cat home and told the owner it died, was cremated with no remains, just like I’ve read similar instances have happened to women who’ve just given birth and were told the baby was stillborn and then remains destroyed before the mother can see her baby.
Hi Cheryl. That is an interesting version of this story. Thanks for sharing it.
Someone at VIP knows the truth, and may eventually risk their job to tell it. I really hope so. In the meantime, I hope VIP looses a lot of business, and they get sued heavily by some aggressive cat loving lawyer.
That’s why I say “No more Groomers, No more Vets, and No more vaccines for my pet!” I’m not putting her life in any vet’s hands, unless I’m not able to take care of her health issues myself.
I groom her myself every day, and clip her nails with my nail clipper when they get sharp. (Just the tips!)
I’m still figuring out the least toxic flea prevention, so right now I just use a half vial of Advantage, and she seems o.k. with it, but I’m not satisfied with it, and want something more natural. The vet says there isn’t anything. Should I believe that?
I can forgive a careless mistake as long as it’s not life threatening (sometimes), but when the perpetrators start covering their a**ses that’s when my tolerance for BS vanishes. Especially when an innocent human or animal loses their life because of some nitwit. This is one of those times.
_Well, my opinion is that if the groomers did not administer medications/as they usually don’t play Dr. and secondly, if the vet didn’t treat this animal_as she stated; the only other conclusion that seems obvious to me was that they bathed her and then left her in the drying box and when they remembered to check on her; it spoke of negligence on their part and someone panicked. Was she fried in that box ? I wonder. Eva
ftnt: we are only human and all of us have failed at some time in life caring for pets. The sad thing is that although admitting our mistakes is very tough; The owner will want to know the details of her cat’s death >no matter how painful they might be to hear.It is unfair not to tell the truth and bring some closure.
If the facts provided are correct, then the cause of death appears to be highly suspicious. Why the rush to cremate the body, unless there was something to hide? Did it not occur to groomers that the owner might want one last chance to see Sandy and say goodbye? At the very least they should have considered that she might want to make her own arrangements regarding burial/cremation? If the allegations are true, perhaps it was cheaper to cover cremation costs than fork out for a potential negligence claim.