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About Me
Stella (she/they/any), 30s
Thanks for joining me for whatever this is! I am working towards a PhD studying the philosophy of pet grief :)
I can also be found at:
Tea Crimes Against Solas @fenharel-apologist94 (Dragon Age)
It's Baloy @i-cant-believe-its-not-aloy (Horizon)
he's thinking
There are two kinds of cats and I don’t need words for either of them, just these pictures:
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My lease is up this month, after which I'll be living short-term with my outlaws. Since my father-outlaw is allergic to cats, I had to find a place for Mia to stay and I was able to get in touch with a retired gentleman who used to volunteer at the same shelter I did. (He even knew Shoresy, which was a gentle moment to share with him how loved he was up until the end. He was also very kind about Starbucks' passing, saying that he was greatly saddened to not have met him after all that I had said about him.)
All of this to say, I just dropped Mia off at his place this afternoon. It was really hard leaving her behind—she cried the whole ride over, and wailed when she left her carrier and saw we weren't home. She ended up crawling under an end table, a tiny little soot-ball with wide, yellow eyes.
I kept it together until I got home. I told her I loved her, thanked the gentleman for the thousandth time for his generosity, and drove home to an empty house.
Mia gone. Starbucks gone. Shoresy gone.
I am doing much better now, despite crying while writing this. I miss my boys but I know they're resting together over the rainbow bridge. And although I keep expecting to see Mia around the corner, or trotting after me with those yellow eyes full of curiosity, I keep reminding myself she's safe and well cared for (and notably, not dead).
My best friend texted me, "I wondered if that would happen."
Oddly, it was a comfort. When I told her I wanted to study pet grief, she shared that she was considering becoming a death dula (I can't answer much about that, sorry, I know only the little she told me then). I wonder if that's what made her answer comforting. I suspect it is in her knowing that my wires would cross like that—that in realizing the void in which Mia-is-not, my body would be primed to relate it to the spaces Starbucks- and Shoresy-are-not.
Perhaps grief is an unraveling of habits. Mia hovering in the bathroom doorway as she watches me sweep the hall. Starbucks crawling up onto the mattress to dutifully crawl into my arms, his purrs becoming the metronome from my breaths as I fall asleep. Shoresy warbling in another room because no one else happened to be in it when he walked in. All the small pieces of them that they left behind in my heart, each echo softer than the last.
It's both a curse and a mercy—that ever-weakening echo.
one day we'll meet again, baby boy
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no matter how much i learn about grief, i'm never prepared for the days i remember Shoresy isn't here anymore. i miss him so much
Shoresy said he'd write my fanfic for me
