Losing a pet can cut deeper than many people realize. Here’s how friends can help

PARIS (AP) — Even months later, the pain of losing a pet can still hit without warning.

The trigger might be noticing — again, for the umpteenth time — how empty the house feels since your cat died, without the pitter-patter of padded paws. Or stumbling across the leash of the dog you lost and remembering how it used to set off tail-wagging glee.

Grieving owners can feel doubly lonesome if the humans in their lives don’t quite know how to help, perhaps because they’ve not had pets themselves or feel awkward around grief.

How can owners and their friends cope better with pet bereavement? Experts in pet loss offer these ideas:

For some grieving owners, pet loss can feel worse than a human death. That doesn’t make them monsters. Instead, it reflects the potential depths of human-animal bonds.

For some people, a pet is their most important relationship, “the being that they see every single day, that maybe sleeps on their bed, that they cuddle with on the couch,” says E.B. Bartels, author of “ Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter."

"There are people who feel more comfortable with animals than with people," she adds. "So losing those relationships can be really, really difficult.”

People who haven’t experienced pet love may struggle to understand what it’s like to lose it. They may think they are being helpful by saying, “It was just an animal,” or “They were lucky to have such a loving owner.” But pat phrases, no matter how well-meaning, can make grieving owners clam up and feel alone.

“You feel like you can’t talk about it because people aren’t really empathizing,” says Annalisa de Carteret, who manages a telephone helpline and other pet-loss support services for Blue Cross, a U.K. animal welfare charity.

“Just allow that person to talk about how they’re feeling, and you don’t need to comment,” she says.

Avoid clichés like, "'Oh, you can get another pet' or ‘He had a good life, he was a good age,’” she says. For the owner, “that doesn’t make you feel any better, because you knew all of those things. You just feel sad and just want someone to listen and to understand.”

Another tip: Don’t assume that an owner’s grief is commensurate with the size or type of animal they lost, or the length of time they had them. The death of a pet lizard, for example, can be as painful for some people as losing the cutest of fur balls for others.

“My friend’s dad has a koi pond and he loves these koi. And he was so upset when a raccoon got in and killed all his koi one summer,” Bartels says. “Some people would be like, ‘Oh, they’re just fish.’ But he loved these fish, you know?”

She suggests that friends can offer practical help: A grieving owner who no longer has a four-legged reason to leave the house might appreciate the offer of a walk with a two-legged companion.

“People can really feel they lose their community,” Bartels says. “In the morning you get up, you bring your dog to the dog park and you get to know the group of people who are there every morning really well. And that’s your social community. And so then if you lose your reason for going ... you’ve lost a lot more than just a dog.”

Up to 30,000 people contact Blue Cross each year for pet-loss support. Many aren’t simply sad but also are fearful that they may somehow have been responsible for their animal’s death or disappearance, de Carteret says.

“Guilt is a really big part of pet loss,” she says.

“They maybe think, ‘Oh, if I’d done something differently, maybe they’d have stayed alive a little bit longer,’ or if they were stolen: ‘If I didn’t put them in the garden.’ Or, ‘What could I have done differently to change the inevitable?’”

For bereaved owners who feel more upset about the loss of a pet than about a family member, that can trigger more guilt, de Carteret adds.

“It’s really normal,” she says. But “it feels wrong to say, doesn’t it? And people don’t want to share that.”

Possibly. But it's not a magic bullet. Each animal has its own personality and a new one won't necessarily fill the void left by another. And if your previous pet was full-grown, you may no longer have the patience for kittens' litters or puppy-training again.

Bottom line: Grieving can't be truncated. The sadness and memories can be lasting.

Bartels lost her dog, Seymour, last June.

“I’m sure I’ll have a hard time again in June when it’s the year anniversary of when we put him down,” she says.

De Carteret keeps her dog's ashes by her fireplace, which was his favorite place to sit.

“Some people will think that's weird,” she says. "But, you know, that’s how I deal with it ... You have to find the right way for you.”

The pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Outside view of the entrance of the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave for a monkey named "Kiki" is seen at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave for a cat named "Ramses" is seen at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave for a dog named "Gazou" is seen at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave for a horse named "Masserau" is seen at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave for a dog named "Ugo" is seen at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

View of a grave at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A grave for a dog named "Rintintin" is seen at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Graves at the pet cemetery of Asnieres-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Maxwell, a young male was one of two kittens that the Leicester family adopted after their beloved adult cat Jimmy was run over and killed last year, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in Le Pecq. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

Tourists visit the dog cemetery while a worker prepares a tomb in Asnières-sur-Seine, outside Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

A sculpture of a dog is seen at the dog cemetery in Asnières-sur-Seine, outside Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

A sculpture of a cat is seen at the dog cemetery in AsniËres-sur-Seine, outside Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Sculptures are seen at the dog cemetery in Asnières-sur-Seine, outside Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.

Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.

Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.

“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.

About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.

Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.

The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.

Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.

In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.

“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.

Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.

The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.

Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.

"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.

There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.

The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."

Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.

Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.

Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)