Whether you are facing a planned goodbye or adjusting to a sudden one, the feeling is the same at its core: a love that didn't end when they did. These poems try to hold both the love and the loss.
I would have kept you longer if I could — one more morning, one more evening, one more time you settled in my lap as though you'd always be arriving. But you had given everything you had: all your trust, all your warmth, all your quiet presence, the particular gift of being chosen by something that owed the world no kindness. Goodbye, old friend. You made the house a home. You made the ordinary days worth having. I hope, wherever you are going, it is somewhere soft, and warm, and known.
Original poem — Cat Memorial Gifts
For the moment of letting go
Many people choose to be with their cat at the end, and some find it helpful to have something to say — aloud or silently. This shorter piece is written for that moment.
Go gently now. You've done everything right. You loved well, and you were loved well, and that is more than most of us manage. You can rest. I'll carry you from here.
Original poem — Cat Memorial Gifts
On the grief of a planned goodbye
When a cat's death is planned — when a vet has guided you toward the kindest ending — the grief is complicated by the weight of the decision itself. You may feel relief for them alongside loss for yourself, and guilt about the relief, and love through all of it. All of that is right. There is no wrong way to grieve someone you loved this much.
In the days after a goodbye, some people find comfort in having something to look at — a portrait that holds their face and their name. We create personalised pencil portraits from your own photo: