Mimi has sent me messages regularly since the day she answered the cardinal and joined her children in their next life. As loving and caring as she was in life, she continues to give me prompts and encouragement in several different ways. You never know where the messages will come from or how the visitor will appear to you. But they will. They love and care about you as they did in life and still want to be near you. Another “Little Visit” from an animal companion who’s gone on to their next life.
From my pet loss journal September 15, 2024
Thinking of Mimi, here in her favorite spot just three months before she went to spirit on August 10, 2024…
Just like September 9 when the wooden black cat figure had fallen on my yoga mat when I needed a reminder about my exercise, this morning a cat shadow was on my yoga mat, right in Mimi’s spot. The shadow was from the running cat figure on the tall votive holder.
I saw it upside down at first, then when I walked around to see and photograph right side up I could see it was literally moving! As the breeze moved the leaves the sun shone through, the running cat silhouette changed shape accordingly and seemed to be running through the dapples.
I was recently remembering Mimi’s daily run across the yard to the deck, even last autumn. She never ceases to guide me. I was having trouble settling back down to exercises without her. I wanted to get right to my big driveway project. But I stopped and limbered up with yoga, and focused, thought I did forget to ride my exercise bike.
Above is from my pet loss journal for September 15, 2024. It was just about six weeks since I’d lost Mimi, but she was never far. Little visits from her and little signs to guide me were frequent, sometimes leaving behind a feather or leaf or other physical object. I did my best to spend time with the moment, record these things and keep the objects if I could, taking photos and video if possible to mark the time and day and look at later.
Cat figures and geraniums
Over Mimi’s last summer both the wooden cat figure and the red geranium became a part of Mimi’s living spirit, and then a part of her memory, just as the running cat shadow did afterward.
It’s an interesting process how we embrace that change in status for objects we associate with our precious companions once they’ve gone to their next life; I call these “attachments” and have a series of articles about my own, including this article.
The wooden cat figure
This little wooden cat figure came into our house with Peaches and Cream, all the way back in 2005. Their person had died and her good friend, also a friend of mine, took care of the two in the house as she sorted and organized her friend’s things. No home could be found for two 15-year-old cats who looked a little ragged after their experience. I had agreed if no home was found I would take them and they arrived with a number of cat things, as we people who live with cats tend to collect.
The cat figure was obviously handmade from that era of cat silhouette shapes for doorframes and shelves and was finished just as you see here, kind of rough, but cute. I wish I knew the story. Was it inspired by a beloved black cat? Who designed it, made it, painted it? I didn’t think to ask then and never found out.
It fell on the concrete at some point and the wood split just in front of the hips. For years I displayed it on this little table on the front porch with the two pieces just pressed against each other, seen below in a photo of nearly all my front porch welcome cats. The faux stone welcome kitty on the shutter between the front door and window is the missing one, and that one came with Mimi’s cat figure with Peaches and Cream too.
In 2020 when I cleaned up the front porch I moved it indoors to repair and it hung out on my workbench until summer 2024 when I got busy with little things around the house so it was easier for me to accommodate Mimi’s needs as she became less active.
I was never fond of the face on this kitty, the little fake smile, or the incomplete background of scribbled black paint and considered a fresh coat of solid black paint because I love solid black silhouettes, then I reconsidered. This was another person’s creative idea, either made by or made for a person who loved cats, and I’d rather leave it with whomever that was. That would carry on anothers’ memory even farther, something I think about my own work.
How the kitty figure became Mimi’s cat figure
When the glue was dry I walked around with Mimi looking for a place outside to display it. At that point I decided it should rest on the arm of Mimi’s purple rocker on the front porch where kitty could still welcome others to our home. But as I occasionally glanced out my front window from my desk I was unnerved thinking Mimi was outside sitting on the arm of the rocker—the figure is fairly large and pretty much Mimi-sized as she was then—and I had to remove it from there. I didn’t even bother taking a photo, I had to rescue her that quickly!
That’s when the cat figure became associated with Mimi in her last months. After that I referred to it as “Mimi’s cat figure” or “the cat figure” and as “she.”
I walked around with Mimi and Mimi’s cat figure a few more times but didn’t find a good place for her to balance as she needed to and be visible, so I just put her in the basket on my bike on the deck so I’d see her and keep thinking about where she should go. There she stayed through Mimi’s last days and when we put her to sleep, and my lost days following.
Mimi has something to say about this
Until September 9, the day after Pet Memorial Sunday:
Wooden cat figure on my yoga mat today!
I have no idea how she got from my bike basket to where she was, upside down, on the edge of my yoga mat—the basket was four feet off the ground and about six feet to the right, the kickstand and bike’s wheels propped in place so the bike couldn’t move on its own. Unless a squirrel gave the cat figure some assistance maybe Mimi had pushed the figure out of the basket and the figure bounced to that spot to make me get to this. And she also managed to stay glued together and not have any other breaks!
Okay, Mimi, I’ll find a place for you! I stood there holding Mimi’s cat figure, spinning slowly around, and wondering where Mimi would want to be. I balanced the figure on both the arm of Mimi’s turquoise rocker, one of her favorite places all through the years, and on the deck rail, Mimi’s other favorite place out there as she had walked the plank from one side to the other for years. The figure looked cute, easily seen, and I could see her from the kitchen, but I didn’t feel these were right.
I turned around and glanced up at the windowsill under my kitchen window, and knew that was the place. Mimi could keep watch over her territory and me, and she needed to be in a higher spot. The slot on the back of her paw and tail that was to wrap around the edge was nearly twice as high as the thickness of the shelf so she’d easily fall off and that wouldn’t do. I found convenient bottle caps that filled the space and held Mimi’s cat figure firmly on the shelf. And there she’s been since then, all the way on the end of the windowsill so I don’t risk knocking her off when I fully open the casement window.
The bonus of that spot was that I could see the tips of the Mimi’s ears and back right outside the kitchen window when I was at the sink.
This past November I was out in the yard near Mimi’s Favorite Scratching Tree and just happened to glance to the right back at the house. I saw Mimi’s cat figure in full morning sun watching me, and smiled, again thinking of her joyful dash across the yard and up the steps to the deck after she’d jumped down from her tree.
The red geraniums
Mimi never minded her bell collar which she wore from 2012 to her last day, but she was apparently particular about the color. Until her last two years she wore a harness and leash outdoors, but just in case she escaped, which she did with one harness, the collar was necessary. Plus, she learned she could summon me with it by jingling it a few times in the kitchen or wherever she was in the house and I’d come looking for her. She was “the lady in red” because she shredded every other color collar I’d gotten her, cotton and nylon, until the red one she wore for at least a decade.
Her red collar is there under the pink harness, and though the geranium looks pink it’s actually the older red one, this from 2018.
I have always kept my geraniums for years, outside in summer, indoors in winter, taking cuttings each year for new plants. Some of my main plants are over a decade old and they’ve always been shades of pink and red. They do stop producing leaves and flowers and the red one above did several years ago, but a couple years ago someone gave me a red one at the end of the summer because they didn’t want to keep it. That one immediately became Mimi’s geranium.
And so it was that after she’d gone on to her next life I put it on the wicker chair she napped on in the garden, until frost. That’s where it sat this past summer too. It bloomed all summer and even greeted Mr. Max in August for his brief and joyful forays into the back yard.
At the beginning of October what seemed to be the last bloom had faded and looking at Mewsette’s garden chair and thinking of Mimi, with Mr. Max’s recent loss, the fading bloom really made me sad. It’s the principle of the garden to accept that everything fades, fails and disappears in cycles and I’ve always loved that for the sense of constant renewal, but this year, after all the losses, it just felt like an ending. But looking a little closer I could see one tiny bud, and another, getting ready to start developing.
The days had grown cold and we had our first frost two nights later. I knew it was coming and the geraniums were safely inside, really seeming like an ending, of the season, of those memories. But that’s not the end of warm autumn weather and I took them back outside on warm days and left them when nights were temperate. At the end of October those buds matured, two last flowers that stayed bright well into November, when they came inside for good, the red and magenta in my bedroom window upstairs.
And the baby red geraniums
I had left the cuttings in little pots outside through the summer, but decided to plant them in clay pots for indoor life over the winter. At the beginning of December the red pot of cuttings produced one bright flower, and about 10 days later another. The last withered petals of the second bloom finally fell this past week, the first week of January. As with the plant they came from, two other buds are already forming, will soon grow, swell and bloom.
So, endings for individual flowers, but the main plant continues, and the cuttings will become their own mature plants someday.
Coming together
The running cat figure has been with me since the late 90s and will continue to be out on the deck, here seen a little above and to the right of center against the brush at the end of the yard.
Mimi’s cat figure has found a home on that windowsill looking out over her territory and me, and I still look at the tips of her ears whenever I’m at the sink.
The red geranium herself has years left, and many other plants made from her cuttings, like the new generation blooming on the inside of the kitchen window. Here is where they all come together, Mimi’s little support structure.
The blooming red geranium cuttings are on the kitchen windowsill—inside, right behind Mimi’s cat figure is on the kitchen windowsill—outside, and looking past all three I can see the running cat figure silhouetted against the trees at the end of the yard, a trio of unrelated things, each from a different time with a different purpose, each sending me a message of love and affection from Mimi, perhaps even chosen by her to represent her spirit in this mortal world.
And now a new one
And she led me to yet another cat figure. I visited my friend Judi’s multi-family estate sale in her shop here in Carnegie at the beginning of December. I’m always guaranteed to find things I can use around the house or in my handmade gifts.
Aside from all the other things I saw and and chose, I kept walking back and forth past a cat figure on the wall. This kitty had pumpkins around her neck, below. I’m not fond of black cats used for Halloween decorations but the pumpkins were nicely done. I’m not one to purchase these sorts of things—I’d rather make them. But this one…I felt a sense of Mimi. Judi has known me and my cats for years and knew what I was talking about when I told her how this little kitty on the wall was getting into my heart. Rather than it seeming like a gratuitous black cat silhouette used for Halloween I almost felt she was looking at me with kind of a humorous twinkle, if her painted eyes could twinkle. And she’s about the same size as Mimi.
So I did bring the kitty home.
Once again I couldn’t decide where this kitty should go. A few days later, walking up the steps onto the deck I looked at the original Mimi cat figure on the shelf and knew the blank space between the shelf and the door was waiting for this cat figure. I took the pumpkins off and put one of Mimi’s old collars on the kitty. Now both of them watch over me.
I could use the pumpkins on something else entirely when the season came around.
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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