What information does a pet crematorium need?

Your suburb, roughly what your pet weighed, whether you want individual or communal cremation, where your pet is now, when they died, and a contact number and address. Having these ready turns a twenty-minute call into a three-minute one.

What a Pet Crematorium Needs to Know When You Call

The call is short if you have the answers ready and long if you do not. Here is everything a South African pet crematorium will ask, in the order they will ask it.

The six things

Your suburb. Not your street yet — they are working out whether you are on a route and whether there is a distance charge.

Roughly what your pet weighed. Cremation is priced by weight bracket, so this is the single biggest driver of the number they give you. An honest estimate is fine. If you are close to a bracket edge, say so — the difference between 24kg and 26kg can be a price band.

Individual or communal. Individual means only your pet, and their ashes come home. Communal means several together, and they do not. Decide before you phone, because being asked this while crying is genuinely hard.

Where your pet is. At home, or at a vet. If at a vet, they will want the practice name and whether the practice knows to release them.

When they died, and whether they are somewhere cool. This affects how urgently the collection needs scheduling.

A contact number and, eventually, the full address. Plus a gate code if you have one, and whether there are dogs on the property.

Two more that are worth volunteering

Whether you want a fur clipping taken. If you have not taken one yourself and they have not yet collected, ask them to take one before the cremation. Most will. It costs nothing and it is the one keepsake that cannot be arranged afterwards.

If you need a cremation arranged

Ease The Paw arranges pet cremation across South Africa. We find the crematorium, book the collection, stay on it until the ashes are back with you, and set a lock of their fur into a paw print keychain in the colour you choose. A flat R500 covers the coordination and the keychain — the crematorium bills you directly at their own rate.

Arrange a cremation →·What cremation costs →·The keychain →·Areas we cover →

Whether anything is going with them. A blanket, a collar, a toy, a note. Say so at booking, and be clear about what you want returned and what you do not. A collar with a metal buckle usually needs to come off; a blanket usually can stay.

What to ask them back

Four questions. They take ninety seconds and they prevent every common problem.

Is the cremation fully individual, or partitioned? The words get blurred. Partitioned means several animals in one chamber with barriers between them. Fully individual means yours alone.
What is the total, including collection? Get the collection fee, any after-hours surcharge and the urn confirmed as included or not. These are the four charges that appear on invoices but not on quotes.
How do you identify my pet from collection to return? You want a specific answer — usually a numbered stainless tag that survives the cremation and comes back with the ashes.
When will the ashes be ready? One to two weeks is normal. Considerably longer suggests batching.

Get it in writing

Ask them to send the total and the collection time by message. Almost every operator will, and it takes them ten seconds.

This is not distrust. It is that you are going to remember approximately none of this conversation in three days, and a written total means nobody has to reconstruct what was agreed.

If you would rather not make the call

This is precisely the call Ease The Paw makes for you. Send us the suburb, the rough weight, and individual or communal, and we come back with one written total and a collection time. We take no commission from any crematorium, so we have no reason to route you to an expensive one.