You Don’t Have to Cremate Your Cat

When a pet is dying, many people reach out to their veterinarian one last time. By default, many vets double as undertakers, passing on a pet’s body to a regional crematorium that accepts animal remains. The owner pays the vet a fee for the arrangements, and the crematorium may return the remains in a small urn, an unassuming memorial to a lost companion.

Pet cremation has been common in the United States for decades now: Some of the first dedicated facilities popped up in the 1970s and ’80s as the practice slowly among humans. Since then, cremation has become so much the default for pets and humans alike that many owners aren’t aware they have other options, Donna Shugart-Bethune, the executive director of the , told me. But animals remain on the leading edge of death care. Techniques first used to handle the remains of livestock and lab animals have become more common for well-loved pets: One such tactic, called alkaline hydrolysis, involves rapidly decomposing a body in a stream of water.