One of our dogs stepped on my cat. I feel incredibly guilty.

This past weekend, one of my family's dogs stepped on my cat. My family has four German Shepherds and had three cats. We haven't had a truly serious issue with our dogs misbehaving around our cats for a very long time. One of them is pretty nervous tempered and he's the largest, but generally, all he'll do is bark and chase them a little bit. He doesn't seriously go after the cats anymore. He's 80 lbs and very clumsy.

I wasn't in the room, but my mom didn't see him grabbing her at all, so we think he stepped on her. She tried to jump up onto the table, then fell. That's when I came to the door after my mom yelled for me. We rushed her to the emergency vet, but it was too late. It was so fast, and I still can't believe she's gone.

I have heard this can happen even with large dogs and toy dogs, and that it's not that uncommon. It's a tragic thing, and I feel better thinking that the dog was just a big dummy, and I don't want to be mad at him. I know it's a risk having animals with such a size difference in the same house, and that we're lucky that nothing like this has happened before. This hadn't happened before, and we didn't know it would.

As much as I try to tell myself this, I still feel incredibly guilty. I always put off getting things for the cats, like "Oh, I'll buy them a cat tree when I have more money..." or "I'll make sure they only have to eat wet food once I have a job....", and I feel like I should have made sure they had those things earlier. I had so many plans to get my own place and be a better pet parent to my cats, but now it's too late for me to do that for her.

I'm not sure how to feel better. I bought my remaining cats a cat tree. I feel like it's not enough. I feel like I should have been there, should have magically been able to teleport there and save her. I've tried over the past couple days to bury myself in preparing myself to take the GRE, and to motivate myself to do well so I can get my own place, but I still don't feel okay. How do I deal with this?

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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/bzkhxm/one_of_our_dogs_stepped_on_my_cat_i_feel/