What about dead animals?

So I talked to my mom back home last week and she told me: "Oh, by the way, I don't have a cat anymore!" It seems our lovely cat 'Numi' (because when you say it quickly and repeatedly, it mixes up to the sound 'minu,minu,minu' which is what 'kitty' sounds like in French... we thought it was funny years ago and it stuck) did not survive her 11th year of living outside in Quebec cold. Yes, I admit, even though I do not see this cat that much anymore, I was a bit sad but then...

I thought of the body. My mom told me she found the cat as hard as stone in her box in the entryway and I did not ask her what she would do with the body (it would have been inapropriate at the time even though my mom is very open and receptive on all topics). I remember that when our previous cat died, it was during the summer and so, my mom buried him somewhere near the house, but during winter?! The ground is quite frozen right now and I don't think my mom has the time to start going through this frozen hearth to bury her cat. But at the same time, I'm quite convinced she doesn't want to keep the body close at hand waiting for spring. I don't see her putting the cat in the wooden stove (oh... as I write this, I'm having goosebumps, this is a disgusting idea to me)! So, what to do with the body as the cat didn't die at the vet and as my mom has to get rid of it?!

So this brings me to two questions:

First, what can we tell about owners from their pet's 'funeral' or 'burial'? As pet spas are now popular and some dogs wear little booties to go outside, I presume some special treatment is available for dead animals in our society...

Second: How does the climate and the context of death influenced the way people were buried, or disposed of, in the past? I'm working on a chapter on Upper Paleolithic burials in Eurasia and it seems quite obvious that most of the burials we find were located in caves (where the ground would not have been frozen) or in special enclosures when in interior Europe... What did northern people do in the cold? Was cremation the best solution? Should we assume that the bodies we find buried in pits in northern regions died during the summer? Can we use climate to explain the fact that we find more 'pit burials' in southern regions than in northern regions? Or is that too easy an assumption?

Well, it seems this topic brought me to more than two questions... it's incredible what can come out of a simple topic such as a cat!