I’ll Always Remember the Way You Looked at Me

Text reads: I’ll always remember the way you looked at me.

This is the cat to whom I dedicated my first set of Animal Sympathy Cards, and who actually inspired me to tell his story of HCM and CHF on a new website, The Creative Cat. Against all odds, after four years of daring CHF to see if it could catch him, it finally did and he lost his battle with heart disease on July 1, 2009. Today I remember his remarkable spirit and share this sympathy card that I designed in his memory.

Namir turns his gaze up to me, enchanting me with his “bedroom eyes” as we spend a morning in the garden. To visitors and to me, once he was sure he had you under his spell he turned on those famous bedroom eyes, narrowing them just enough so they looked mysteriously slanted and angling up a tourmaline glance, as if sharing a secret, looking totally exotic (he thought), purring joyfully, certain you belonged to him completely.

It was so much a part of “us”.

You can find this card on my page with the entire selection of similar cards, Animal Sympathy Cards.

But read on to find out more about the card, and about Namir. Things like this are the inspirations for my creative life and my memorial gifts.

Composing the text for this card

When I chose the phrase for this card, as with all my other animal sympathy cards that have text, I chose to make it positive in all ways I could. Instead of “I’ll never forget the way you looked at me” I chose to turn that “never” to “always” and felt it lift me: “I’ll always remember the way you looked at me.”

Like many of the phrases I choose for my sympathy cards, this one can work either way, as something you would say to your cat, or he might say to you because, of course, he would see the love in your eyes as well.

Who could look at those eyes and not see the love? I always felt so honored.

About finding the photo, and about Namir

Namir was an inspiration for many creative things for me, hundreds of photos and several sketches and paintings. His loss was my final motivation for creating the sympathy cards designed especially for the loss of a pet, focusing on cats.

But when I designed that first set of 12 cards, Namir wasn’t part of it. I think in fresh grief I focused on other cats, photos I remembered well, even though I scrolled through all my photos as part of my grief response. If I had found this photo I would have been over the moon, or maybe it would have stopped me.

I call this expression of Namir’s his “bedroom eyes”, that “come-hither look” that invites, well, in the case of cats, cuddles and pets and purrs, but most often it just means “I really love you”. I tried for years to get a photo of this expression on Namir, one that captured not only his face but a setting that I associated with him. But it’s really hard to focus down onto a pet’s face and get a good photo that isn’t somehow distorted in a way that I didn’t want in this memory, and wanting to use my DSLR for the best photo quality possible I practically had to stand on my toes to get the focal distance for my lens to capture his face and not his back or the ground around him.

I took this photo May 22, 2009, when I knew Namir was failing, and when it was also spring and prime gardening time and he and I and Cookie were spending as much time as possible together out there, and I was taking more photos than I even had time to look at. When he passed just six weeks later on July 1, 2009, I desperately wanted a photo of those eyes but there were so many to look through and this one was so recent, not as firm in my memory as others. I found many others, but not this one.

When Cookie passed in February 2012 and the year wore on into spring I was crowded by memories of her and sorted through all those photos again, and there it was, after the clematis vine in full bloom, the pea vines we’d planted in April, the daisies and fleabane, just a few photos of Cookie in the garden and the patio, a photo of Namir on the steps to the deck, and the last one of the day, this photo. One before it was a little blurry.

And how much more perfect could it be? Out in the back yard, the warm morning sunlight on Namir’s fur, enhancing his green eyes and the pink of his nose and mouth and ears, all just as I’d remembered. Best of all, our favorite time, out in the yard, the green of spring behind him and just a few vivid forget-me-nots, of all the flowers to be there.

Once I found it I remembered that morning and taking those photos, standing in one of the rows between tomato seedlings when he’d walked between them all from the brick path to me, stood and looked up at me, then sat down and looked at me more fully. It was important I notice him and share this moment. If I only had one chance to get this photo, I couldn’t have asked for a better one, nor been given a better one.

I guess I found it when I was ready.

NOTE: none of my cats roam. We visit the yard together, always under my supervision, and usually on a leash, unless they’ve proven they will stay with me. The days of Cookie and Namir with me out in the garden are like a myth, they were so perfect.

All images and text © 2022-2025 Bernadette E. Kazmarski  •  www.custompetmemorialvotives.com

All images and content are copyrighted and may not be used or reproduced in any way without my written permission. Please contact me if you are interested in using any of my content.

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