Don’t be a reductionist. If that’s all your cat was and that’s all your relationship was, then fine. If it wasn’t, you owe it to that cat to remember all the good times you two had between when it came to life and when it lost its life. Do it for the cat.

Then, when you’ve finally moved past this point, realize how much joy you gave that cat. Know that you did something beautiful in letting that cat know it was loved from beginning to end. Think about the cat’s perspective. Its death may have sucked; they rarely don’t. Now think about every moment that cat experienced growing up and being with you. Every sense of relief that cat felt when you came home. Every wave of comfort when you gave it pets. Every moment of safety it felt when you cared for it.

I know how sad you are, and I know this is tough love here, but that’s what carried me through losing my dog on Christmas 2022 and her sister December 16th 2023. We did our best. They couldn’t have had happier lives. I’m glad we could do that for them. It was worth the weeks of agonizing grief for the 14 and 16 years of happiness they experienced.

ive had to say goodby to a few pet friends now. i dont regret having my pet friends.

we got to enjoy each others company, and honestly the pet gets the better end of this deal if their people are sound.

When my dog died a few months ago, I cried harder than I had in probably 15 years on and off for a solid week. It’s brutal. But I promise it will get a little more bearable as time passes. Doesn’t feel like it right now, but it will. And the best part is that it’s not like they just disappear from your life. It will become more bearable, and the tragedy will give way to wonderful memories that you share over and over.

The point is that he got born and got to live with you for many years.

Don’t focus on the end, focus on all the great moments you had together.

I didn’t write this, but I reread it every time I lose someone I love, and it has helped me a lot. Hope it can do the same for you.

"Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."

Yes. Maybe enjoy things too. The universe is meaningless and we’re here by accident.

The only question is what to do about it.

Anyway, sorry about your cat. I’m sure it lived as nice a life as possible.

Yes. Life is a blip of mostly suffering and pain. But, within that whirlwind of time, there are incredibly warming and thought-provoking moments. For your cat, it was probably laying on your lap. Cozying up somewhere warm. Getting pet, and chasing something far too nimble to catch.

Life has genuine joy in it that makes the hard times worth it. It’s through the hard times that we can find the most sympathetic and connecting moments.

I’m sorry for your loss, I’m sure your cat loved their time here, with you.

Yeah pretty much. What you do in the meantime is up to you.

Pets are particularly weird because we get them knowing damn well we will outlive them. I view it as giving the little babies as close to a perfect life, and as comfortable a passing as pawssible.

You gave your cat years of love, how can all that be meaningless? It will be a sad day when my 19yr old buddy passes but I’m grateful for his love everyday and happy I can love him back. Death is inevitable but life is what you make of it.

It hurts. I had to put my cat of 18 years down last year and it hurt for a long while. But I wouldn’t trade having her as my friend; the end was sad and rough, but I made sure she had as good of a life as I could give her the entire time she was with me. We can’t do much better than that for our furry friends.

Hang in there friend, it does get better with time.

The point is that the grief you feel from losing your cat is a tiny sliver of the grief in the world, being felt by all the people sustaining the loss of death.

And that’s on the best of days: a world full of suffering.

But we’re also on the brink of world war, and a hundred other disasters that could cause just as much death, and just as much grief and hopelessness from the people who survive.

So, it may sound bleak, but now that you have seen some of the deepest pain, the meaning of this life should be clear: to do everything in your power to protect as many people as possible from the feeling you’re feeling right now.

Take your own suffering as exactly the pill needed to get you up and moving. You’ve been given a glimpse of hell. And, with that, understand your job is to prevent hell on earth.

Still you got to love, didn’t you? Love always leads to heartbreak. But at least there is love and those small moments between the two of you that must have been incredibly precious. That’s all there is to life, I believe.

Edit: trust me, there are worse ways to live. For example, life lived chasing illusions such as money, fame or power.

I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s hard to lose a loved one of any species

I truly believe that events have no meaning until we impose meaning on them. It is our work, as humans, to do so. It is the essence of creativity, of being, and of life itself. Meaning doesn’t comes prepackaged, no one can provide meaning for you or me. There isn’t “true” meaning out there for us to discover. There are meaningful answers we can provide, after wrestling with the event itself.

Your cat existed for a purpose. Perhaps it was to show you love and companionship for a time during this difficult life. Only you can say. But honor the creature you loved by finding the meaning in its life. It lived for a reason.

Do we just live and suffer and die?

Largely, yes. As far as we know, there’s no grand purpose nor reason of being. We’re all just floundering about, trying to answer the fundamental questions of existence for ourselves. There may be an objective answer, however, which is why I do what I can to push humankind in the direction I believe is most likely to result in that discovery - even though my significance is only comparable to that of an ant.

Regarding your loss, specifically, I was in a very similar boat ~12 years ago. Honestly considered just riding into the sunset in search of Bob Ross, at the time. Today, I’m extremely glad to have stuck around to raise another cat who loves me beyond anything I ever thought comprehensible. In short, when life as a whole sucks, there’s respite in the moment. When the moment sucks, take respite in the whole of life’s experiences.