Day by day

November 22, 2021November 22, 2021 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

I’ve noticed, over the past few days, noticeable signs that I’m starting to feel a little bit more like normal. I’m not close to being back to my usual self yet (and I will always be forever changed now anyway), but the movement is in that direction, which I am glad about. As I’ve said a number of times over the past few days, that raises it’s own set of guilty feelings where I feel bad because I’m feeling a bit better, like it means I don’t care enough. I guess that this is normal too.

I still feel pretty bad when I wake in the morning. I feel like I want to go back to sleep because when I’m asleep I’m not grieving, at least not conciously so. When I wake up though I’m soon hit by the fact that it’s another day without Stan being there. The thought of going downstairs is painful because now, instead of opening the door to the utility room and being greeted by his little back arching up to be stroked before being fed, he’s not there. In fact, none of his things are in there any more. And it’s the same at nighttime – that same loss of routine. I miss saying goodnight to him, knowing he was safe before I went upstairs to bed. It’s affecting me a little less each day, but it’s going to take time before I reach whatever the new equillibrium will be.

While I’ve spent quite a lot of time this week reading articles on pet-loss grief, one thing has occured to me about how the type of animal you have lost can have quite a profound effect on how it affects your life. I misss my interactions with Stan, the daily routines, doing the things I enjoyed, and the things he enjoyed, seeing him in the places he liked to sit and sleep. One of the things I’d not really considered before is how the loss of some animals can bring with them a whole other set of losses. Dog owners talk about how they suddenly lose all the interactions they would have when out walking their pet, and there must be other examples with other animals too, perhaps not seeing the other people at the stables where your horse or pony was kept for instance, or purchasing the food for an exotic pet from a specialist store. These don’t diminish how I’ve been affected by the loss of Stan, but in some ways, the independent nature of cats can mean that these other relationships and interactions are reduced in some cases.

Here’s Stan sat atop a cushion on the sofa at the back of the living room. He would often choose to sit here if I was sat reading a book or something. I miss the way he would follow me around the house very much indeed.

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Holding on to things

November 21, 2021November 21, 2021 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

After writing yesterday’s blog post, I had a shower and then went downstairs. My wife was sat on the sofa with Stan’s casket on her lap. She asked if Id like to sit and hold him, which I did, and I immediately broke into floods of tears once more. While the casket contains Stan’s ashes, it also feels like a real connection to him as he was. It can never be the same, of course, but that sense of it being him is still there.

At the moment he follows us around the house in his casket – in my office while I’m working, in the living room when we are downstairs, and then on my bedside table overnight. I’m gaining comfort from this but I know that it will not be something we do for the long term. Either I will grow around my grief and not feel the need for that physical connection, or I will need to stop myself from doing it as it will make it more difficult to move forward with my life. I’ve tried to think back to the loss of our previous cats, but cannot remember if I treat their caskets in the same way – they definitely stayed in the living room for quite some time, but I don’t know if we moved them around the house with us in the way we are doing with Stan’s.

Again, this comes down partially to that increased sence of spirituality that I sense at times like these. I want there to be some follow on after our lives come to an end, and dearly hope to be reunited with loved ones again. And it’s this sense that there is something more that can make it more difficult to move forward. A sense of guilt (again) that if we start to move forward that the one we have lost will know and somehow be saddened by that. I think that this is just part of the healing process – my mind knitting itself back together – and that if our loved ones are looking on at how we are coping, they will absolutely know how much we loved them and that we wish so much that they were still with us, happy and well.

My wife and I went out for our lunch today to a garden centre not too far from where we live (we’d take our sons but they have little interest in such trips if they can avoid them). We had sandwiches, shared some chips, and got a couple of pieces of cake to take home with us to eat later (the boys already have a chocolate cake in the house – we don’t exclude them from treats!). While we were in the restaurant we noticed that it was dog-friendly, and a number of people had their dogs with them. I thought it would be difficult to see other people with their pets, but I’m glad to see them happy with their animals. It’s a nice thing to see.

Here’s Stan on my office chair. The chequered bit is my shirt, the white bit my ass. He would sometimes squeeze into the gap between me and the chair back, occasionally twisting his head around for a stroke or a chin-tickle, making me quite uncomfortable but very happy to have him there. I wish so much he was here doing it now.

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Feeling guilt over the death of my cat

November 18, 2021November 19, 2021 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

I’ve spoken a little over the past few days how one of the things affecting me since Stan was run over last weekend is my sense of guilt.

Guilt has always been something that I’ve encountered when we lost one of our other cats, but in all those cases it was different. Each one of them died at the veterinary practice because the decision had been taken to end their suffering. We have lost them to cancers, kidney failure and suspected poisoning from eating something they shouldn’t have while they were outside, and in every case it was very clear that easing their suffering was the most dignified, humane, and loving thing to do. Despite this, the guilt was still overwhelming. Should we have done more for them? Did we overlook something that might have changed the outcome? The feeling of remorse at the times we were too busy to spend time with them (often busy just doing unimportant stuff in the grand scheme of things). And possibly worst of all, the feeling that we might have given up on them too soon. All our other cats lived to a relatively good age – only Tom, another cheeky little black and white fella, died younger, but even he was eight years old. Still too soon though.

The guilt I feel over the loss of Stan is different. It isn’t guilt over a decision to end his suffering, it’s guilt that I could have done something that would have preserved his life. All it would have taken was for me to come downstairs, walk through the kitchen (as I did anyway) and then into the utility-room and lock up his cat-flap for the night. It would have taken a few seconds and he would have been safe and sound in the house with us. Instead, I made a cup of tea and sat down with my wife in the living room to watch a movie. And while we watched, Stan went outside, went onto the road, and then lost his life.

Everywhere I look I’m told that I shouldn’t blame mysef for something like this. I couldn’t have known what was going to happen. I thought he was asleep upstairs still. He’d been outside on many other occasions at this time and always been ok. He sometimes wouldn’t go out at all and would instead just come into the living room and nip at my ankles until I made some room for him to spread out.

But if I’d just locked the cat flap…

It feels a little like the world’s most awful videogame, where the mission is to keep your beloved pet cat safe and well, and I failed. Only instead of re-starting the level and making different choices in order to get a successful outcome, the game just ended with no way for it to ever be played again. It feels a bit cheap to be making an analogy like this. And disrespectful to Stan. But my mind keeps on wanting to re-play the events of last Saturday night as though somehow, maybe in some miracle, I will actually be able to change time and Stan will be back with us, full of love, affection, and mischief.

I was responsible for Stan. I was responsible for giving him a safe home, providing him with food and comfort, keeping him healthy and happy, keeping him safe, and providing him with love. And on one of those things I failed because of a moment of carelessness. The guilt I feel is because of my love for him, and it is because I failed in my duty to him. While I believe that this guilt will ease and the pain I feel will lessen, I’m not sure that I will ever be able to forgive myself properly, and that for the rest of my life, from time to time, I will remember what happened and how I might have so easily changed things. I guess this is a burden of loving

I’ve written this today because I found this page on pet-loss guilt last night. It contains a sentence that seems particularly important given what I’ve spoken about today:

If a beloved pet goes missing or dies suddenly or traumatically, we can tear ourselves apart with guilt for not having foreseen what would happen.
If only…. How to deal with pet loss guilt

I actually found that this poage helped with how I am feeling quite a lot, despite what I’ve written above (in fact I would recommend the site from where it is taken – The Ralph Site – as a very good resource for anyone suffering through the loss of a pet or animal companion). And, despite the somewhat downbeat nature of this blog post, I do believe that things will get better over time. My love for Stan is what causes me this pain right now. But my love for him is what will prevail in the end.

I’ll close the post with another photo of Stan. Seeing him makes me happy.

The decorator forgot his dust-sheet. It soon became Stan’s…

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Just carrying on

November 16, 2021November 16, 2021 fishyfisharcade4 Comments

After taking the day off yesterday, I went back to work today. I work from home so it’s not like I have a commute or anything, but having a home office means that I’m still constantly reminded of Stan’s presence (and lack of it now 😦 ). He would sometimes jump up on my desk while I worked, often getting in my way until I would lift him back to the floor, gently chiding him for his mischievousness. Sometimes though he would hop onto the window-sill beside my desk an keep an eye on the toings-and-froings outside. Today, while working, I noticed three or four of his hairs there on the sill where he used to sit. They’re still there now as I type this. I don’t know how to deal with them. Part of me thinks I should just move them away so that I don’t feel sad every time I see them. Another part of me wants to be reminded of his presence and that I should feel sad. They’re his hairs and are precious now that he’s gone. But this in itself is somewhat silly as I’ve already tucked a small tuft of his fur into my phone case and, while it makes me feel bad to say so, they’re just hairs – he didn’t present them to me as a gift, they’re just a few stray strands that fell from him while he sat looking out of the window one day.

I always find it difficult to let things go, especially small physical mementos like this. It’s not even as though we don’t have other things to keep to treasure his memory. We have his collar and nametag, his food dishes and his bed (themselves in some cases hand-me-downs from our other cats), countless photos (including a bunch of Instax snaps stuck on the side of the fridge), some videos, plus all the memories held in our heads and hearts. Despite this, the thought of disposing of these few stray hairs upsets me, as though disposing of these hairs is somehow disposing of his memory, which it most definitely is not.

I think that, if my wife were to read this, she’d tell me I need to stop dwelling on things like this, that I need to think of the happy times and start to move on. I know she is as upset at Stan’s loss as I am, but she’s always been able to deal with things like mementoes in a more practical and non-sentimental fashion. She’s packed up his dishes and other possessions today, washed his bed, and will put them somewhere safe in the event we ever get another cat one day. I’m glad she’s done this as, while seeing these things tidied away upsets me, it also upset me to see them just hanging around knowing Stan will never be here to use them again, and I don’t know if I could have faced packing them away myself, at least not yet. His scratching-post is still in the utility room and I know that this will have to be thrown away. He managed to scratch large parts of the rope-binding off it while sharpening his claws and it’s not something that can really be donated elsewhere in its current state (although it’s probably still perfectly good for claw sharpening). So this will need to be disposed of, and it will instil another note of finality to his time here with us and bring me further sadness.

Maybe he’s looking down on me as I type these things, making mental note of my promises to let him nip and scratch me for treats, playtime and cuddles to his heart’s content. I like that thought.

I know that this is billed as a film photography blog, but at this particular time I feel I need to talk about how I’m feeling, both as a tribute to Stan, and also as a means of dealing with my emotions. He meant so very much to me.