Feature: First pet cemetery in Milan consoles animal lovers

For all those who love animals, Italy's Milan has a pet cemetery now. Tommasina Di Giovanni was the first to bury her female cat, Noemi, this August. "I feel that my little drama is welcomed with love here," she told Xinhua while sitting next to her beloved's tomb.

Di Giovanni is a career girl and gets back home very late in the evening. But when she opens the door, she does not feel tired nor alone anymore. "Animals fill your life with affection and joy. My cats are part of my life," she said.

"I adopted Noemi when she was just two months old, her fur was messed up and her eyes were blue color and big. We immediately liked each other, we fell in love with each other," she recalled. Noemi died only three years later in a tragic accident at home.

"I cannot believe that she is not with me anymore, sometimes I still call her name when I get back home. I dream of her coming up to me, I dream of her waking me up in the morning like she used to do every day," Di Giovanni said with tears in her eyes.

"Of course I knew that death is part of life, yet I was not ready," she added. "Then a friend of mine told me there was a pet cemetery in Milan. I buried Noemi together with her little toys, a shirt and other objects of mine. I come here every day," she said.

Besides to being the first pet cemetery in the Italian business capital, "Il Fido Custode" (The Loyal Guard) will also be the largest pet cemetery of Italy. "All kinds of pets can be given a dignified send-off here, including big ones - dogs and even horses - and smaller ones such as hamsters or fish," Fausto Bianchi, the architect who projected the cemetery, explained to Xinhua.

Bianchi said the pet cemetery, whose works are still in progress, is an entirely private project carried out by various investors. The area, located just beyond the S. Siro stadium in the city's west sector, will stretch along a total of 5 hectares, that it to say as many as 50,000 square meters able to host roughly 30,000 animals with a five-year turnover.

"I am an entrepreneur thus I am attracted by new challenges. I also love animals and think that it is important to be close to those people who lost their friends ... We want to be the custodians of these creatures in a sort of paradise for animals," said the director of The Loyal Guard, Gianni Amenta.

Amenta told Xinhua that investors have opted for English-type graveyards, a green lawn with memorial stones, all equal, with the animal's pictures, name and dates. "We want those whose beloved have passed away to feel peace and serenity here," he said. This is why costs are also the same for everybody, 150 euros (167 U.S. dollars) per year, he noted.

There will also be an optional collection and cremation service available for the remains. At present, pets may be buried only in private gardens, and even then only after the approval of local health authorities, otherwise the law requires them to be cremated for hygienic reasons.

The Loyal Guard also provides veterinary assistance. "We certify the death of pets and cancel them from the civil registry in case they are registered, otherwise we register them into our catalog," Shara Faelli, the cemetery's veterinary, explained to Xinhua.

"Pet attachment is something very personal that different people interpret in different ways. But the possibility to maintain a relation with animals once they have passed away help many owners to overcome more easily the sorrow of a loss," she said.

In fact, Faelli noted, pets are a big comfort for many people who live alone in big cities like Milan, and in particular for the elderly. According to some official estimates, there are around 150,000 dogs in Milan as well as some 140,000 cats, roughly one every four residents. Endit