Still Mourning

In December of last year, my cat Scooby passed away.

I am still not over his loss. Maybe I never will be.

I watched the beginning of a documentary on Netflix about Fungi. There was a time-lapse of a mouse decomposing. I had to turn it off. It looked too much like his body. I remembered brushing Scooby’s fur with a toothbrush, to prepare it for burial. I wanted him to look his best. It was a difficult task, but it was my job. It was my duty to him.

I am still raw.

I don’t think getting over him is even something I want. Getting over him sounds like I’m leaving him behind. I want the exact opposite of that. I want to hang on to him. To hold him. I want to keep him with me, in whatever way I can, forever.

There are still lingering questions, “what ifs” left behind.

One thing that keeps rattling in my mind is whether we should have forced him to be inside. (He was killed in an attack by some animal outside.)

We tried, several times, to bring him inside. But he clearly didn’t want to be indoors. Whenever we’d bring him in, he really didn’t like it. Screaming. Shedding. Shivering. He made himself clear.

Unlike our indoor cats, who were born and raised inside, Scooby was an outdoor cat. He loved the outdoors. He went on little adventures. I started to go for short walks where he’d accompany me. But he’d always come back home. He loved to sleep on our front porch in the little cat house we got for him, or in the backyard in my outdoor chair.

Would he have adjusted to being trapped inside, eventually? I don’t know. It really seemed to me that he wouldn’t. He never got more used to it, he always hated being put inside. He always reacted the same way. I can still feel his little heart beating extra fast when I held him inside. His eyes begged me to take him back out. So I did.

Even if he was still alive, trapped indoors, would he have been happy?

Is two years of a happy life better than ten while locked inside?

I don’t know.

When I see videos of depressed animals in zoos, the answer seems clear. But when I walk by Scooby’s burial site on our front yard, everything becomes fuzzy again.

I just want him back. All the logic and reason in me fades away. I just want him back.

I read this line in a book recently:

“I almost never wept for him, I just stopped looking at the sky the way I used to.” —Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation

That is how I feel. The world takes a different quality now. There are moments of light, and they can be bright. But I always remember, eventually, that he is gone. Then everything becomes gray.

This is the part where I’m supposed to wrap this up with a bow, and give you some lovely parting advice about how to deal with grief, with loss.

I’m not sure I have anything to give you. But here goes:

Firstly, I reflect a lot on how lucky we were to have spent time with him. He could go whoever he wanted, but he chose to live with us, to sleep in our yard. I still feel so honored and loved by that choice. And so it felt even more important to respect his wishes to stay outside. If you love them, set them free, as they say…

I am forever changed because his of his choice, because of his expression of love towards me. I am so grateful for that.

Since his passing, I have been talking to Scooby. I close my eyes and imagine myself with him, where he is now. And then we talk. And I write down our conversations in my journal. I talk to him about what he’s up to in his life now. I ask him questions, I learn interesting surprises. Last month, he ran into an old friend he had not seen in years. He said he was feeling a bit shy, and wondered if his friend had forgotten about him. But he’s determined to say hello. Next time we speak, I’ll ask him how it went.

He is dealing with all of this better than I am. He helps me cope. Even after death, he still heals me.

When you lose a pet (I hesitate to use that word, he was so much more than that), you do not just lose them. You lose a part of yourself. Remember that and do not try to pretend otherwise. Do not try to force yourself to forget or get over it. Instead, look deeper at the time you had, look closer at the memories, and you may find even more than you knew you had.

Part of the process of grief, I think, is acceptance not just of the loss, but of my new self. This new version of myself that cannot watch a timelapse of animal decay without being triggered. This version of me that journals conversations with a dead cat. This version of me that feels compelled to tell the world that yes, I am still talking to you about my dead cat.

We think getting over something means to move past it, to let it go and move on with our lives. But for me it means talking about him even more than I ever did before.

When I talk about him, when I share his memories with you, I keep his memory alive. But more than that, I grow it. I grow his aura by telling you about him. Now, you, who maybe never knew of Scooby, now know. There is some guy somewhere who had a cat named Scooby, and his cat is gone. And his cat was like this, or that.

If you have lost someone but haven’t shared anything about them with others, maybe you could give it a try. I certainly feel better talking about him than not talking about him.

You don’t have to write poetic tributes to those you lose. Just talk about them. I think it is the little, specific memories that are most important of all.

Like the specific way Scooby would sit with his butt raised high to the sky. He was a Sphinx in the front, Eiffel Tower in the back. One would think that petting his butt would satiate his desire, and it would eventually lower. That was not the case. If I started petting his rump, he’d raise his butt even further up. Eventually, I learned that if you pet his head, then his butt would lower until he fell into a comfortable loaf. It was like his head was a little remote control for his behind. These little formulas I slowly built up with Scooby.

It is these little things that made him mine, and made me his.

He also had big claws, which we did not cut, out of fear that he will need them someday. As I type this, I am thinking about the moment he was attacked. I wish I could have been there. I would have been a feral human protecting him. I don’t think any amount of injury would have stopped me. I would do anything to be thrown back in time into that moment. God, how I wish I could have been there.

He liked to knead directly on the flesh of my thighs. I let him do whatever he wanted. It was worth the pain to be close to him. Thankfully, I knew that then, even before he was gone.

These were our little games. He was my little partner. He still is. He always will be. Play in peace, my sweet baby Scooby.

If you have animals of your own, maybe you’ll hug them a little more today. Maybe you’ll play with them a little longer. (Please play with them. They wait all day for you.)

And if you have lost an animal, maybe you’ll leave a comment and tell us about them.

And maybe the aura of this post will shine with the energy of all the little animal souls puttering about, like a Northern Lights constellation filled with the stars that brought light into our lives.

And we’ll remember them.

We’ll mourn them, not to get over them, but to get more of them.