The nerve! The audacity! It’s not exactly uncommon for Game of Thrones to cruelly, gruesomely kill off even its most beloved characters; as anyone who has watched even five minutes of the HBO drama knows, that’s basically its bread and butter. And sadly, that rule has long extended to pets as well; just ask poor Grey Wind, or Lady, or Shaggydog, or Summer—four of the six direwolves the Starks raised, all of whom suffered one grim fate or another. Still, even knowing all that, this most recent loss is simply a bridge too far.

Friends, countrymen, animal lovers of all stripes—let us unite in a moment of mournful silence for Ser Pounce, whom show-runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss confirm is dead.

The last time we saw Ser Pounce alive, he was paying his owner and companion Tommen (R.I.P. to Tommen, too!) a visit as Margaery (who’s also dead now) tried to flirtatiously woo him at his bedside. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly recently, Benioff dashed all hope that Ser Pounce’s disappearance since Tommen’s death might just mean he’s simply been hiding in one of King’s Landing’s many nooks and crannies.

“Cersei hated the name ‘Ser Pounce’ so much she could not allow him to survive,” Benioff said. “So she came up with her most diabolical [execution]. Ser Pounce’s death was so horrible we couldn’t even put it on the air.”

Weiss even teased fans with the possibility of some feline bonus material. “If you buy the super-extended, super-charged Game of Thrones box set that comes out,” he said, “the death of Ser Pounce will be in there. Just one whole episode devoted to the death of Ser Pounce.” Frankly, it’s an insult to Ser Pounce that this was presented as a joke, rather than actually executed as that magnificent cat deserved.

But if you want to know the real reason for this cat murder—meow-der?—the actual culprits might be right under our noses. Benioff confessed that the feline actor playing Ser Pounce “was really not fun to work with,” adding, “There’s a reason the phrase ‘like herding cats’ came into existence.” Weiss, meanwhile, praised dogs for their relative obedience on set, arguing, “Cats have their own agenda.”

On one hand, these men are not wrong; on the other, it seems their anti-cat predilections might have done Ser Pounce in before his time. Hopefully, Ser Pounce had one of his nine lives left—and is spending it very, very far away from any of the Seven Kingdoms.

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