Anticipatory grief is grief that arises before a death—when you know it’s coming, but your cat is still alive. On one end of the spectrum, anticipatory grief can cast a shadow over the time you have left with a sick or senior cat. But this “grief in advance” can also be a gift, if we can recognize it and work with it.Continue Reading
As painful as it is, grief is a universal human experience. There isn’t a person on the planet who has not, or will not, experience the loss of a beloved family member. Our culture ranks humans above animals, and therefore, grieving the loss of an animal friend is often not recognized for the painful experience it is. This disenfranchisement can leave people feeling isolated and misunderstood—which compounds the grief.Continue Reading
The loss of a cat is heartbreaking for any guardian, but many are blindsided by the depth and intensity of grief they feel. You’re grieving not only a being, but also a relationship that was unique to you. In addition, cats often with people through entire chapters of their lives. The cat’s death marks the end of an era in the human’s life.Continue Reading
Making a decision about whether it’s time to let a beloved pet go is one of the hardest things anyone loving a cat will have to go through. What can compound the difficulty of the decision is that most cats don’t like going to the vet’s. Having the euthanasia performed in the comfort of your home, perhaps even in one of your cat’s favorite spots, can help make saying goodbye a more peaceful experience for both cat and human.Continue Reading
Losing a beloved cat is devastating, no matter what the circumstances. Grief is a very individual experience, and no two cat guardians will grieve in exactly the same way. Finding ways to remember the lost cat in ways that are meaningful to each person can be an important part of the healing process.
Jennifer Muldowney, the owner and creative force behind Rainbow Bridge Memorials, helps pet parents heal after loss by creating unique pieces of jewelry that contain a small portion of the pet’s ashes.Continue Reading
Even if our cats live into their late teens and sometimes early twenties, it’s just not long enough. The price we pay for sharing our lives with these wonderful companions is that sooner or later, we will experience the pain of loss, and it can be as devastating. Joelle Nielsen, a veterinary social worker at the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, says she often compares the loss of a pet to the loss of a child or a close family member. Nielsen says the big difference between losing a pet, compared to losing a human, is that “much of society is not aware of the strength of the human-animal bond, so pet loss is often seen as ‘disenfranchised loss,’ meaning it is not socially recognized.”Continue Reading
We live in a culture that doesn’t like to discuss death, let alone look at it, yet pet guardians who ask former zookeeper and Portland-based photographer Kristin Zabawa to take pictures of their dying pets say the photos are critical in helping them process their grief.
For the past five years, Zabawa has been quietly capturing the final moments between guardians and their pets during what she calls “SoulSessions.” Continue Reading
Even if our cats live into their late teens and sometimes early twenties, it’s just not long enough. The price we pay for sharing our lives with these wonderful companions is that all of us who considers our cats family members or best friends will sooner or later experience the pain of loss, and it can be as devastating as the loss of any loved one.
From the moment I turned the final page of Gwen Cooper’s New York Times bestseller, Homer’s Odyssey, I was hoping that Gwen would write another cat themed book. When I met Gwen back in September, and heard her read the first chapter of Love Saves the Day, I knew this book was something very special. A book like this doesn’t come along every day.
Love Saves the Day is a novel written from three points of view. The primary narrator is Prudence, a brown tabby rescued from a deserted construction site on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Prudence is a keen observer of humans and knows them better than they know themselves at times. “Humans best understand the truth of things if they come at it indirectly. Like how sometimes the best way to catch a mouse that’s right in front of you is to back up before you pounce.” You’ll find yourself smiling, and sometimes laughing out loud, at Prudence’s insight into human nature and astute descriptions of her world. From the “wonderful heated cat bed” in a place called “Home Office,” to Prudence’s dismissal of a self-cleaning litterbox (“It scared me so much that I started going on the living room rug just to avoid it“) Cooper’s love for cats and understanding of their nature and emotional lives, tempered with a sense of humor, is evident throughout the book.Continue Reading
Even if our cats live into their late teens and sometimes early twenties, it’s just not long enough. The price we pay for sharing our lives with these wonderful companions is that all of us who considers our cats family members or best friends will sooner or later experience the pain of loss, and it can be as devastating as the loss of any loved one. Joelle Nielsen, a veterinary social worker at the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, says she often compares the loss of a pet to the loss of a child or a close family member. Nielsen says the big difference between losing a pet, compared to losing a human, is that “much of society is not aware of the strength of the human-animal bond, so pet loss is often seen as ‘disenfranchised loss,’ meaning it is not socially recognized.”
Another significant difference is the matter of euthanasia. Deciding to end a pet’s pain and suffering is one of the most difficult choices pet owners ever have to make, and it can engender massive feelings of guilt and regret after the fact.
While there are some commonalities, grieving the loss of a pet is a unique experience for each individual. Factors that play into how the loss is handled Continue Reading
When a friend’s cat passes away, my heart hurts for my friend. When I lose one of my feline Reiki clients, my heart hurts for the cat’s guardian, and for the lost connection. When I connect with an animal during a Reiki session, I connect with the essence of that animal, and even though I never get to meet many of my remote Reiki clients in person, I form a strong attachment to them over the time that I work with them.
Cookie was both: a friend’s cat, and a Reiki client. She was also a tortie. Cookie belonged to animal artist Bernadette Kazmarski. Early this morning, at the ripe old age of 19 years, Cookie passed away after a long and steady, but gentle decline. As Bernadette writes in her beautiful tribute My Little Sunflower, “her green eyes looked directly into mine; we held each others’ gaze for a minute or more as she lifted her petite paw and laid it on the back of my hand, comforting me, saying goodbye. Then she shifted her position and her gaze and drifted from consciousness.”Continue Reading
