I regularly write about my personal experience of the losses of my own cats on my website The Creative Cat. I first published this post on The Creative Cat on January 5, 2026.
The strangest things, and where you find them, can be a touchstone for a flow of memories, of moments that show strength and love and bring a depth to our relationship with our animal companions though their loss is clearly imminent. Another in the series of “Attachments”, the bond we feel with everyday things that have some connection, however distant, with the life of and our relationship with an animal companion who’s gone on to their next life.
My old violet fleece bathrobe has seen more than its share of times good and bad over the past 20 years or so. Yet every autumn when I slip it on for the first cold morning it’s as if I didn’t take a six-month break from it. It’s in the background of many photos with cats on my lap or hanging in the bathroom with cats on the sink or cabinet, as it was for Mr. Sunshine in the photo above from 2013. The thing is indestructible so I’m glad I like it, and also glad it’s indestructible for the memories it holds, physically and emotionally.
The first time I put it on this autumn 2025 I put my hands in the pockets out of habit and felt some little hard objects in the bottom of the right-hand pocket, the pocket I’d use if I was carrying something in my right hand and dropped whatever that was into the pocket to free up my hands. Often these things are little hardwares from some enterprising morning project, or something I found in one place that needed to go to another. I couldn’t determine what they were with my fingertips so I pulled out three of them and found they were Greenies dental treats.
My cats love the catnip flavor, and along with handing them out as regular treats with a purpose, they like them enough I also used them to test or entice appetites in the recent years of palliative care for cats. Because they would always take one the test was for how strong their appetite if they turned down a meal. If they would eat one treat or more I could just observe them presuming their inappetence was digestive, or give them some treatments for nausea which would pick up their appetite so they would resume eating. If not, I’d go to other measures, taking a temperature, checking hydration, looking for possible sources of pain.
I would have dropped a few in that pocket to take upstairs to one of the cats confined in the bathroom for observation, or overnight so they would have food available and a cozy familiar place, and so that I’d be able to check them first thing without looking for them. The treats were something they would crunch even if they had no appetite for regular food. I remembered the worry and sometimes fear associated with this circumstance: please eat the treat. Was it a bad morning? Was it one of a series of bad days that seemed to be leading to a conclusion? Or were they just a little off? So many mornings like this since 2022, who might have been the intended recipient of the treats who ended up not eating them?
Counting backward, not Mr. Max, I kept some in the studio just for him and Morty and he was never confined to the bathroom. Basil? No, the only time Basil was confined to the bathroom he managed against all odds to break out. Mimi? Her time of being in the bathroom was during summer, not the time I’d wear this bathrobe.
It was Mr. Sunshine, and I felt instinctively this was true. And it was likely from his last day, March 1, 2024, when he did not come downstairs right away and I went back up with treats to see how he reacted to them. He didn’t eat them, nor any food that morning. I had dropped the treats back in the pocket after he had turned his face away from one I was offering. His temperature was slightly elevated, but he got up and came downstairs, before the chain of events leading up to his death that afternoon.
The treats remained in the pocket, forgotten, until the following autumn 2025 when I found them in there. I remember pulling them out then and looking at them in the palm of my hand, deciding to toss them in the trash because they’d surely be stale, but deciding instead to keep them for that memory of that day.
The treats are still in my pocket. They aren’t hurting anything. When my hand finds them in the bottom of the right-hand pocket I remember Mr. Sunshine, and then others, and those mornings, and days, overnights, that I carried a few to the bathroom in my pocket. I don’t remember my worry and fear or even their losses, I remember their strength, and their trust, and their determination to live each moment they could knowing I would help them do that, and the increasing depth of the bond between us as we faced this together.
In Threes
So I remembered Mr. Sunshine this morning when I went out to the garden for my yoga in the bitter cold, my hands in the pockets of the robe, fingering the treats in the right pocket. I stood for my postures in front of Mr. Sunshine’s flower, feeling very connected to him, and then each of the others, and the four siblings in groups, from the photos I worked with the day before for my “Friday Four and More” photos.
Three Birds
As I worked my warrior poses, one hand down on my shin and the other stretched up toward the sky as I turned to look at it, a trio of birds flew overhead, headed west. Immediately I thought of the varied groups of three who would nap together. While the four siblings did often gather together, a selection of three was the second most frequent nap collection, and how many sketches and photos I have of three of them together—three of them curled together on the bed was the very first sketch in my three-year series of daily sketches.
I continued my posture, returning upright with my arms outstretched, then leaning down the other way looking up at the opposite hand in the air, and saw the three birds again flying above my rooftop and past my upraised hand heading east this time. They were circling overhead and I lost count of my moves for the distraction thinking about them as the three birds passed overhead again and I nearly tipped over as I followed them, looking up and around from that angle.
I moved to my tree poses, standing in front of Mr. Sunshine’s flower and smiling, thinking of those naps of three, watching the light cold breeze move the bits of tattered nylon on the petals, then push it around a bit in one direction, then the other, wondering how much longer this flower would be able to keep spinning. I got my answer less than a minute later when a quick little gust sent the flower spinning, then slowing, then back to fluttering tatters and little movements back and forth. I’m including this video I took at the time just because, and it includes the quietness of the moment, bird sounds and breezes, but there’s no reason you need to watch the entire 1:45.
How close I feel to them in those moments. It’s interesting how the strangest of things, and where you find them, can bring on a whole review of memories.
Dreams of Three
Giuseppe, Mewsette and Mr. Sunshine were all dreaming very deeply on my desk, curled and tucked neatly together. I saw swirls, and began to visualize how I would interpret those swirls. No heavy lines, I wanted the darkness of their faces, where the swirls began, fading in swirls and marbles and fading lines to the lightness of their shapes. Somehow, speckles would be a part of it. I took a photo, below, and pondered my assignment.
Read more about this painting.
Also read articles about Pet Loss and Pet Loss in the First Person, where I share my own experiences, and enjoy my self-published book of my own stories of sensing my cats’ presence with me after they’ve gone on to their next life.
Little Visits
Stories of sensing my cats’ presence after they’ve gone to their next life
This post on The Creative Cat includes the text as well as a video with my reading of the stories illustrated with photos and art.
Click the image to read and listen to Little Visits.
And a note from “The Creative Cat” where I originally published this essay, and where I write about pet loss just about every Sunday…
Thank you for following our grief journey after losing seven members of our feline family.
I hope sharing our experiences have helped you in some way, as sharing my experiences with you helps me.
You can read all the articles related to their losses by tapping one of the images here, in the side bar or in articles about pet loww. You can also read all my articles about my own losses in the category “Pet Loss in the First Person”
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