Hurt.

When I pull animals from shelters, I like to pick the sick ones. I know that they have more of a chance with me, than they do in the shelter. I can give them things like better vet care, more nutritious food, and one on one love which I think is important. I have things like a nebulizer for kitties with a bad URI, a baby scale to determine weight gain/loss, and an arsenal of meds for everything. I also do silly things like make up words to songs and sing it to them, words about how they're going to get better and a family is going to see them and want to take them home.
When I lose one, my world crumbles. I do rescue with my whole heart, and a death rips my insides out and stomps on them. I feel like a failure, despite illnesses that are often far beyond my control or capacity to fix. I always hold an animal through their death, and I try so hard not to cry. I want them to only feel love, not me cursing the Universe for taking a life so innocent and undeserving. I tell them it's okay, that they're going somewhere beautiful and to not be afraid. The end is usually violent, messy, and causes me to sob uncontrollably. I cry to the point that it's hard to inhale again. I curse God for giving me a heart so big that I got into rescue in the first place. I cry, and I cry, and I plead for a way to make that hurt stop.
Given that I live in a major city, there is nowhere to bury an animal at my house. Everything here is concrete, and the few public parks certainly won't appreciate a rescue burying lost animals there. The hardest part about losing an animal is having to throw them away. This is the part that actually makes me feel like I am a horrid person, on top of feeling like a failure. I have tried so hard to find a way to make it better. I wrap them in one of my good towels, place them in a shoebox, and then in a shopping bag - but not a crappy bag from Safeway, they always get a good bag because they at least deserve to not have insects get at them, despite that being the circle of life. I don't want that for them. I have to check the shoebox over and over again. I'm not a vet, and I know they've passed, but you hear weird stories about animals not really being dead.
Then they go in the trash. And doing so causes me more misery than I have been able to admit to. I sob all over again. It doesn't seem fair for them to go that way.
I know this probably makes me sound like I've gone bonkers, but it's because I truly care about every animal that I take in. They are lives that depend solely on me and what I am capable of doing for them. It's a lot of pressure, and when I fail one of them, which is how I see it, I break down for a while. It takes a lot to keep getting back up.