Your Pet Loss Diaries

Jan 21, 2013

by Gabrielle
(Scotland)

I went out today to look at your burial place. It is the first time I talked to you outside.

Two wrens were out feeding on the ground not far away. They would never have dared if you had been here. It was windy but sunny. You would not have liked it. You did not enjoy the sound of the wind.

Even the outside misses you. The snowdrops are almost through. They will be open in a day or two. The daffodils are about 5 inches above the ground. You won't be here to see them and they won't look as beautiful without your head poking through.

I try to be cheered by the arrival of spring time, but I still feel a hollow place which becomes filled with pain when I realise you are not here to share it with me. I removed the flattened cardboard box you liked to sit on in front of the radiator. I remember feeling exasperated because I had bought both you and Josie an expensive plush cat bed with handles which you tried once and then rejected.

I couldn't throw the box away. I couldn't throw the shoe box marked 'rabbit catcher - do not throw out'. I used to use this to catch the rabbits you pushed through the cat flap. Poor things, it must have been a shock. But you loved the 'game' we played trying to catch them and didn't mind at all that I put them back out in the woodland part of the garden.

You were such an extrovert, how could you become so ill so quickly. Where are you now. How can you be dead?