Nonny, I am so, so sorry. My own pet died at age 36- and 33 of those years were with me.
It's hard, feeling their absence like a black hole in your life.
Idk if you've heard of the Grief Ball In a Box analogy, but it's very fitting.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ball-box-iivATow
The key difference is, with a pet that's been in your life for so long, the ball is less of a ball, and more shaped like your pet- and the sharper parts of the shape hurt even more when they make contact with the pain button.
Pets often have a place in our lives other humans don't- so when you feel their absence in that way, it hurts more.
The pain gets better. The pet-shape in the box shrinks. Their memory stops hurting after a while, and becomes a source of bittersweet nostalgia.
I know society in general mocks folks who treat pets like family, but have a funeral or a memorial for your cat in a way that gives you closure.
(I sent my pet to a vulture to have his remains preserved in the way that felt best for me, and it's given me an odd sense of closure, knowing he's being seen to by an undertaker who specializes and has passion for the animals they tend to.)
I'm so sorry for your loss, and I hope you heal in time.
I'm sorry nonny. My cat had to be put to sleep in August of 2023.
I did end up getting another cat. Rescue situation, and people I trusted asked if I would take her.
I don't tell you that to recommend you get another pet. That's just how my life shook out. Because even though I love her, it's not the same. She's not the same. And the grief from my first baby still hits sometimes. It's better now, I don't cry at the drop of the hat, but I still tear up, and I still feel it.
I know we're just nonnies on the internet, but I am genuinely, truly sorry, and I hope you're able to find peace and healing whatever that looks like for you. ♥
Thank you for not recommending getting another pet.
I see so many people go 'your pet would want you to rescue another! Go get one immediately' without thinking that maybe the person should wait to get another pet.
I lost my first cat when he was 18 in about 2014. At the time I didn't want another pet because I was afraid I would start treating them like my first one, instead of letting them be their own cat.
A couple of years later, we had a calico show up who got pregnant and brought her babies to the front porch (we had had other cats, it is just they weren't *my* cats, they all preferred someone else) and I ended up with three black and white kittens (two of which who looked like my first cat).
The one that didn't look like my first cat started preferring someone else, and we sadly lost him to I think an illness we didn't catch in time (lot going on at the time). I sadly lost one of the two I still had in July of last year at only 8. He was my little heart kitten. I was his emotional support human. It still hurts.
I still have his brother (currently in my arms as I type this purring away), but he isnt' the same. Neither of them were the same as my first kitty. I have two other cats as well, one of whom is a velcro kitty, and neither of them are the same as my first kitty.
I know that it helps some people with their grief to go out and rescue new pets, but not everyone is like that, and I wish more people understood that. Sometimes getting a new pet right after you lose the old one is the wrong thing to do.
I lost my bird in Feb, and folks are already showing me links to other birds to adopt, pigeons and parrots in need of a home, and I'm sitting here like "Why do you think a companion I had for THIRTY-THREE YEARS is so easily replaceable?"
I am NOT ready for another long term commitment to another long-lived pet when I still greet my bird when I come home, and am answered by silence- a silence that doesn't end, and is incredibly heavy after three decades of having his chirps as part of my natural ambient noise.
Maybe in time, I'll adopt another pet. But right now, I'm still mourning. I finally got to the point where I don't cry immediately when thinking about my bird- but I still do. I still feel his absence like a lead weight in my chest, or a static-filled void in the space he used to occupy.
For me, it would be an insult to him, to our life together, our memories, to simply shrug and go "okay, next pet!"
Maybe that works for some people, but I sure as fuck am not one of them.
(The only consideration I've made for another pet is a small critter that is hands off, but still needs care, so I have something to combat the depression- a jumping spider- but even that is FAR in the future.)
Healing takes time, and it's unfair to one's self, the deceased pet, and a future pet that will very likely end up being subconsciously compared to the last pet- and reality never lives up to memories, as they tend to become biased over time.
Yeah, I genuinely didn't think I was going to get another cat after him. I do love my girl, and it does help in a lot of ways that she's so completely different from my boy that it's easy to not reflect my grief onto her.
But if someone had tried to give me one before I was ready, or tried to convince me to do it before I knew I could...
Yeah, how I ended up with the three black and whites was sort of funny.
We had an outside cat (we had her five kittens inside, they were two years younger than my cat). As the years went by, we were left with just her and one of her kittens.
We lost the outside cat (she went feral after we got her neutered) when she was 18. A couple of months after that, my dad was looking outside and gestured for us to come look.
There was an orange and white cat eating the food we had left out for our neighbors old barn tom.
I went out, the cat leaped off the porch, I made kissy noises at it, and it leaped back up and rubbed me and went to eating. That is how we got Timmy. He was the friendliest cat I have ever seen, even eclipsing Arthur, a long haired grey cat that just showed up one day. (they were several years apart).
I noticed he was a social eater, he didn't want to be inside, and he LOVED going for walks (I sometimes think that is how he ended up here. He just started walking and never turned around to go home), but he wanted someone with him when he ate.
We had waited a couple of months before getting him neutered just in case he was someone's barn cat, and a couple of months after we got him neutered, we noticed a calico around. She was skinny so I took a bowl of wet food and a small bowl of treats and put them out on our septic tank (we live in the country in case it wasn't obvious), and I watched Timmy walk to the food, step over it, go to where the calico was and lead her back to the food.
My dad said he saw them coming down the road (before this) with Timmy leading the calico.
She was to scared to get her neutered immediately, and she got pregnant, and had her kittens.
One day I open the door to give them food, and she was sitting out there with a kitten by her side.
I go out, the kitten runs and hides, and she starts eating. She then leaves and brings back a second kitten, which she left at the bottom of the porch while she ate some more. She then brought that kitten onto the porch and went and got the third. By this time, I wanted the kittens to settle down (they were seeing a giant for the first time. I have a great view of one of their little rears because that was all that was visible where he hid, and the other one looked ready to leap back off the porch when he saw me :P)
But this was two years after I had lost my first cat. I don't think I would have been able to handle it if someone had tried to hand me a kitten after I lost my first one.
That sounds hilarious and adorable. For some reason I'm getting the image in my head of a mom cat coming after you for child support and demanding you take responsibility.
I got my cat from the local pet store - they partner with a cat rescue in my area, so these were all rescue kitties. They knew that my cat had passed, but I still had to go in every week for food for my other pets. A while later, I was there and they mentioned that one of their rescue cats hated being around other cats & was miserable in the rescue, and would I be willing to think about adopting her now that I had no cat at my house?
Tone on the internet is hard, but to be clear, they were very kind about it & I felt no pressure, and in fact had to take some time to think about it which they were kind enough to give me.
I visited her a couple of times, got to know her, and decided to adopt her where she made herself quite at home. She's a bit spicy, and I've already had to go to urgent care once from a bite, but I love her so in the end, I'm glad about it, and I'm glad that they asked, even though it took me about a month to really decide one way or the other.
I think it was more she was like 'look what I made!'
Honestly, the orange and white tom that brought her actually stepped up (and she wasn't a bad momma) and I think tried to teach them to hunt (I remember an incident where one of them, my little heart kitten, was playing with a mouse while the other cats were eating dry food, and he threw the mouse up and it landed in the bowl of dry food. I have a picture of the other cats looking at that mouse like 'what is this doing in my food?'), he was also protective.
We had another cat that was moving in at the time (we had no say, he said I live here now and he meant it), and he was trying to chase off the other cats (he is a velcro kitty and VERY jealous), and Timmy, the orange and white, put a stop to that *quick*.
Yeah, I was just thinking today that I wouldn't really want to adopt from a shelter, I know they can have some great cats, but it is so hard to tell what their personalities are like, and so far I have had good luck with cats that *want* to live with me.
I see on the internet all the time about how 'animals just want to be free' 'keeping pets is like slavery!' and they bring up all the pets that run away from home.
I then look at my cats and my current batch can all go outside without a leash, and they will let me catch them (often it is the other way around, I am running from them because they want attention), and my heart kitten would come when I called him.
Because these cats chose to live with me, so I know they want to be here.
To me, getting a shelter cat, it would be difficult to guarantee that, because their personalities can be drastically different in the shelter vs a home where they feel safe (or at least not like they do in the shelter).
Not everyone lives somewhere with an obvious feral cat population. Some of us have to adopt from shelters or we'd just... never get to have cats.
My first cat came from a shelter, and she's literally everything I've wanted in a kitty! And I guess adopting from a shelter is technically a bit of a gamble, but we adopted her partially because of how she acted in the shelter. She was in the last cage we looked at and meowing DESPERATELY while basically throwing herself against the bars. Took my husband and me like two seconds to be like YEAH THAT'S THE ONE haha.
We later found out she's probably either an escapee from or descended from cat from a local-ish Siberian breeder. So we might have accidentally gotten a fancy $2000 cat for like... $100 OMG. That said, you can't put a price value on a beloved pet, so even if we had paid thousands of dollars for her, she'd be worth it!
Where I live we don't have a feral cat population, these are all strays that are dumped, not cats that have been living wild.
I live rurally, and people love to go to the country to get rid of their unwanted pets, so we often see cats and dogs (or did, it has gotten better in the past few years) go through and some of them choose to stay.
One of the cats that decided to stay obviously has maine coon in him, though we are pretty sure that he isn't purebred, he just showed up and said 'I live here now'. He is the one that tried to chase the others off, but was told 'no, you don't do that' by Timmy.
Anyway, sorry if I read your tone wrong, but one of my cats is very sick (the last from the kittens that the mom brought) and we have to wait until tomorrow to take him to the vet. I am afraid that I am going to lose him. So, not reading tone very well right now.
No worries there, my tone was intended as neutral.
I suspected you lived in a rural place, and that's definitely how our experiences differ; I live in a city and almost never see feral or even stray cats. (Don't get me wrong, I know they exist because the shelters are always full of them. I'm just unlikely to come across them randomly.)
Ah, okay, I noticed my ability to read tone tends to correlate to my mood, so just wanted to make sure.
Yeah, I don't see stray cats often, because cats are often much more wary than dogs, but they do occasionally come around. Most of them are really skittish and leave before we have a chance to tame them down, but we do have the occasional one that stays.
Thanks. I hate to say that it isn't looking good, but I really hope he will be okay.
Just got back from the vet and am cautiously optimistic.
Vet said the cat had a high fever and potentiall pancreatitis. Cat is on antibiotics.
It is just difficult because his entire family, from 'stepdad' (could be real dad, though I always thought he was neutered long enough before he brought the mom back that it couldn't be) to his mom and his two brothers, while being darn good cats, were also short lived, with various health problems.
anon not to be callous because I realize you're grieving but it really would have been great if you could have put a content warning in your header like above.
and i say this as somebody who's lost several beloved pets, because i really wasn't expecting to get gut-punched by pet death when visiting arr of all places.
i realize anon posts can't be edited but if any replying anons could do the same from now on that would be super considerate.
Pet death is one of those topics that seem to be posted on nearly any forum, regardless of how relevant it is to the board. The last time I had a pet died, I had to avoid many sites because of how pet death cropped up a few times a week without warning. I don't fault grieving users for wanting to turn to communities they already frequent, but I do think it's fair for others to express discomfort around the topic.
I agree a warning would have been nice, but I also totally understand that that probably wasn't the first thought either.
I'd lost a really really good rooster this last mother's day (of all days) and I'd finally gotten to a point where I wasn't a moping soggy mess about his vacancy. I was not ready to see something like this.. at least not here. I'd wanted to reply earlier with something maybe helpful but I was so suckerpunched I've had to kind of avoid the topic and this section of ARR altogether. Felt 36 year pet anon had the best response anyway, what else could I add to that.
I'm sorry for your loss anon, but I do unfortunately know how you feel.
I also did not appreciate getting slapped in the face with someone's dead pet. Yeah I know it's the internet and anything goes. I'm very glad there were some nice and kind replies abd I hope they were helpful but I'm not sure this is the right venue for that kind of venting.
I'm so sorry, anon. I definitely get how you feel. I lost my cat around this time last year. She was 18 years old and it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. Adjusting was so hard. It still stings.
My advice is to be patient with yourself. It's okay to not be okay. It doesn't matter if it takes ten days or ten years, you just have to go at your own pace. One foot in front of the other, take it day-by-day kind of a situation. It's going to suck, but it will eventually be bearable, even if it's not right now.
I realize it's been a few days now, so I hope you're feeling at least a little better. Take care, anon <3
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no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-26 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)I’m having a difficult time adjusting
She was 13 years old
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(Anonymous) 2025-05-26 05:22 pm (UTC)(link)It's hard, feeling their absence like a black hole in your life.
Idk if you've heard of the Grief Ball In a Box analogy, but it's very fitting.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ball-box-iivATow
The key difference is, with a pet that's been in your life for so long, the ball is less of a ball, and more shaped like your pet- and the sharper parts of the shape hurt even more when they make contact with the pain button.
Pets often have a place in our lives other humans don't- so when you feel their absence in that way, it hurts more.
The pain gets better. The pet-shape in the box shrinks. Their memory stops hurting after a while, and becomes a source of bittersweet nostalgia.
I know society in general mocks folks who treat pets like family, but have a funeral or a memorial for your cat in a way that gives you closure.
(I sent my pet to a vulture to have his remains preserved in the way that felt best for me, and it's given me an odd sense of closure, knowing he's being seen to by an undertaker who specializes and has passion for the animals they tend to.)
I'm so sorry for your loss, and I hope you heal in time.
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(Anonymous) 2025-05-26 08:19 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-26 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-28 07:46 am (UTC)(link)I did end up getting another cat. Rescue situation, and people I trusted asked if I would take her.
I don't tell you that to recommend you get another pet. That's just how my life shook out. Because even though I love her, it's not the same. She's not the same. And the grief from my first baby still hits sometimes. It's better now, I don't cry at the drop of the hat, but I still tear up, and I still feel it.
I know we're just nonnies on the internet, but I am genuinely, truly sorry, and I hope you're able to find peace and healing whatever that looks like for you. ♥
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-28 01:10 pm (UTC)(link)Thank you for not recommending getting another pet.
I see so many people go 'your pet would want you to rescue another! Go get one immediately' without thinking that maybe the person should wait to get another pet.
I lost my first cat when he was 18 in about 2014. At the time I didn't want another pet because I was afraid I would start treating them like my first one, instead of letting them be their own cat.
A couple of years later, we had a calico show up who got pregnant and brought her babies to the front porch (we had had other cats, it is just they weren't *my* cats, they all preferred someone else) and I ended up with three black and white kittens (two of which who looked like my first cat).
The one that didn't look like my first cat started preferring someone else, and we sadly lost him to I think an illness we didn't catch in time (lot going on at the time). I sadly lost one of the two I still had in July of last year at only 8. He was my little heart kitten. I was his emotional support human. It still hurts.
I still have his brother (currently in my arms as I type this purring away), but he isnt' the same. Neither of them were the same as my first kitty. I have two other cats as well, one of whom is a velcro kitty, and neither of them are the same as my first kitty.
I know that it helps some people with their grief to go out and rescue new pets, but not everyone is like that, and I wish more people understood that. Sometimes getting a new pet right after you lose the old one is the wrong thing to do.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-28 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)100%.
I lost my bird in Feb, and folks are already showing me links to other birds to adopt, pigeons and parrots in need of a home, and I'm sitting here like "Why do you think a companion I had for THIRTY-THREE YEARS is so easily replaceable?"
I am NOT ready for another long term commitment to another long-lived pet when I still greet my bird when I come home, and am answered by silence- a silence that doesn't end, and is incredibly heavy after three decades of having his chirps as part of my natural ambient noise.
Maybe in time, I'll adopt another pet. But right now, I'm still mourning. I finally got to the point where I don't cry immediately when thinking about my bird- but I still do. I still feel his absence like a lead weight in my chest, or a static-filled void in the space he used to occupy.
For me, it would be an insult to him, to our life together, our memories, to simply shrug and go "okay, next pet!"
Maybe that works for some people, but I sure as fuck am not one of them.
(The only consideration I've made for another pet is a small critter that is hands off, but still needs care, so I have something to combat the depression- a jumping spider- but even that is FAR in the future.)
Healing takes time, and it's unfair to one's self, the deceased pet, and a future pet that will very likely end up being subconsciously compared to the last pet- and reality never lives up to memories, as they tend to become biased over time.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-29 06:18 am (UTC)(link)Yeah, I genuinely didn't think I was going to get another cat after him. I do love my girl, and it does help in a lot of ways that she's so completely different from my boy that it's easy to not reflect my grief onto her.
But if someone had tried to give me one before I was ready, or tried to convince me to do it before I knew I could...
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-29 12:31 pm (UTC)(link)We had an outside cat (we had her five kittens inside, they were two years younger than my cat). As the years went by, we were left with just her and one of her kittens.
We lost the outside cat (she went feral after we got her neutered) when she was 18. A couple of months after that, my dad was looking outside and gestured for us to come look.
There was an orange and white cat eating the food we had left out for our neighbors old barn tom.
I went out, the cat leaped off the porch, I made kissy noises at it, and it leaped back up and rubbed me and went to eating. That is how we got Timmy. He was the friendliest cat I have ever seen, even eclipsing Arthur, a long haired grey cat that just showed up one day. (they were several years apart).
I noticed he was a social eater, he didn't want to be inside, and he LOVED going for walks (I sometimes think that is how he ended up here. He just started walking and never turned around to go home), but he wanted someone with him when he ate.
We had waited a couple of months before getting him neutered just in case he was someone's barn cat, and a couple of months after we got him neutered, we noticed a calico around. She was skinny so I took a bowl of wet food and a small bowl of treats and put them out on our septic tank (we live in the country in case it wasn't obvious), and I watched Timmy walk to the food, step over it, go to where the calico was and lead her back to the food.
My dad said he saw them coming down the road (before this) with Timmy leading the calico.
She was to scared to get her neutered immediately, and she got pregnant, and had her kittens.
One day I open the door to give them food, and she was sitting out there with a kitten by her side.
I go out, the kitten runs and hides, and she starts eating. She then leaves and brings back a second kitten, which she left at the bottom of the porch while she ate some more. She then brought that kitten onto the porch and went and got the third. By this time, I wanted the kittens to settle down (they were seeing a giant for the first time. I have a great view of one of their little rears because that was all that was visible where he hid, and the other one looked ready to leap back off the porch when he saw me :P)
But this was two years after I had lost my first cat. I don't think I would have been able to handle it if someone had tried to hand me a kitten after I lost my first one.
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(Anonymous) 2025-05-30 11:46 pm (UTC)(link)That sounds hilarious and adorable. For some reason I'm getting the image in my head of a mom cat coming after you for child support and demanding you take responsibility.
I got my cat from the local pet store - they partner with a cat rescue in my area, so these were all rescue kitties. They knew that my cat had passed, but I still had to go in every week for food for my other pets. A while later, I was there and they mentioned that one of their rescue cats hated being around other cats & was miserable in the rescue, and would I be willing to think about adopting her now that I had no cat at my house?
Tone on the internet is hard, but to be clear, they were very kind about it & I felt no pressure, and in fact had to take some time to think about it which they were kind enough to give me.
I visited her a couple of times, got to know her, and decided to adopt her where she made herself quite at home. She's a bit spicy, and I've already had to go to urgent care once from a bite, but I love her so in the end, I'm glad about it, and I'm glad that they asked, even though it took me about a month to really decide one way or the other.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-31 01:56 am (UTC)(link)I think it was more she was like 'look what I made!'
Honestly, the orange and white tom that brought her actually stepped up (and she wasn't a bad momma) and I think tried to teach them to hunt (I remember an incident where one of them, my little heart kitten, was playing with a mouse while the other cats were eating dry food, and he threw the mouse up and it landed in the bowl of dry food. I have a picture of the other cats looking at that mouse like 'what is this doing in my food?'), he was also protective.
We had another cat that was moving in at the time (we had no say, he said I live here now and he meant it), and he was trying to chase off the other cats (he is a velcro kitty and VERY jealous), and Timmy, the orange and white, put a stop to that *quick*.
Yeah, I was just thinking today that I wouldn't really want to adopt from a shelter, I know they can have some great cats, but it is so hard to tell what their personalities are like, and so far I have had good luck with cats that *want* to live with me.
I see on the internet all the time about how 'animals just want to be free' 'keeping pets is like slavery!' and they bring up all the pets that run away from home.
I then look at my cats and my current batch can all go outside without a leash, and they will let me catch them (often it is the other way around, I am running from them because they want attention), and my heart kitten would come when I called him.
Because these cats chose to live with me, so I know they want to be here.
To me, getting a shelter cat, it would be difficult to guarantee that, because their personalities can be drastically different in the shelter vs a home where they feel safe (or at least not like they do in the shelter).
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-31 05:35 pm (UTC)(link)Not everyone lives somewhere with an obvious feral cat population. Some of us have to adopt from shelters or we'd just... never get to have cats.
My first cat came from a shelter, and she's literally everything I've wanted in a kitty! And I guess adopting from a shelter is technically a bit of a gamble, but we adopted her partially because of how she acted in the shelter. She was in the last cage we looked at and meowing DESPERATELY while basically throwing herself against the bars. Took my husband and me like two seconds to be like YEAH THAT'S THE ONE haha.
We later found out she's probably either an escapee from or descended from cat from a local-ish Siberian breeder. So we might have accidentally gotten a fancy $2000 cat for like... $100 OMG. That said, you can't put a price value on a beloved pet, so even if we had paid thousands of dollars for her, she'd be worth it!
Also, obligatory cat tax: https://64.media.tumblr.com/cf29199f1ca359a15c6ccc34039ac3b1/9b2e9e30bfa95b1a-34/s1280x1920/97243d909ec926e2da67b564eb9cd7aabacd76bc.jpg. :D
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-31 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)We've gotten great cats both from shelters, and via the Cat Distribution System. Our oldest was adopted, and the other three just showed up.
CW: Sick Pet
(Anonymous) 2025-06-01 12:04 pm (UTC)(link)I live rurally, and people love to go to the country to get rid of their unwanted pets, so we often see cats and dogs (or did, it has gotten better in the past few years) go through and some of them choose to stay.
One of the cats that decided to stay obviously has maine coon in him, though we are pretty sure that he isn't purebred, he just showed up and said 'I live here now'. He is the one that tried to chase the others off, but was told 'no, you don't do that' by Timmy.
Anyway, sorry if I read your tone wrong, but one of my cats is very sick (the last from the kittens that the mom brought) and we have to wait until tomorrow to take him to the vet. I am afraid that I am going to lose him. So, not reading tone very well right now.
Re: CW: Sick Pet
(Anonymous) 2025-06-02 01:57 am (UTC)(link)No worries there, my tone was intended as neutral.
I suspected you lived in a rural place, and that's definitely how our experiences differ; I live in a city and almost never see feral or even stray cats. (Don't get me wrong, I know they exist because the shelters are always full of them. I'm just unlikely to come across them randomly.)
Anyway, I hope your kitty is okay. :C
Re: CW: Sick Pet
(Anonymous) 2025-06-02 01:44 pm (UTC)(link)Ah, okay, I noticed my ability to read tone tends to correlate to my mood, so just wanted to make sure.
Yeah, I don't see stray cats often, because cats are often much more wary than dogs, but they do occasionally come around. Most of them are really skittish and leave before we have a chance to tame them down, but we do have the occasional one that stays.
Thanks. I hate to say that it isn't looking good, but I really hope he will be okay.
Re: CW: Sick Pet
(Anonymous) 2025-06-02 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)Just got back from the vet and am cautiously optimistic.
Vet said the cat had a high fever and potentiall pancreatitis. Cat is on antibiotics.
It is just difficult because his entire family, from 'stepdad' (could be real dad, though I always thought he was neutered long enough before he brought the mom back that it couldn't be) to his mom and his two brothers, while being darn good cats, were also short lived, with various health problems.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-06-02 07:40 pm (UTC)(link)cw pet death
(Anonymous) 2025-05-28 08:31 pm (UTC)(link)and i say this as somebody who's lost several beloved pets, because i really wasn't expecting to get gut-punched by pet death when visiting arr of all places.
i realize anon posts can't be edited but if any replying anons could do the same from now on that would be super considerate.
Re: cw pet death
(Anonymous) 2025-05-29 12:17 am (UTC)(link)Pet death is one of those topics that seem to be posted on nearly any forum, regardless of how relevant it is to the board. The last time I had a pet died, I had to avoid many sites because of how pet death cropped up a few times a week without warning. I don't fault grieving users for wanting to turn to communities they already frequent, but I do think it's fair for others to express discomfort around the topic.
Re: cw pet death
(Anonymous) 2025-05-29 12:11 pm (UTC)(link)I'd lost a really really good rooster this last mother's day (of all days) and I'd finally gotten to a point where I wasn't a moping soggy mess about his vacancy. I was not ready to see something like this.. at least not here. I'd wanted to reply earlier with something maybe helpful but I was so suckerpunched I've had to kind of avoid the topic and this section of ARR altogether. Felt 36 year pet anon had the best response anyway, what else could I add to that.
I'm sorry for your loss anon, but I do unfortunately know how you feel.
Re: cw pet death
(Anonymous) 2025-05-29 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-05-30 06:52 am (UTC)(link)My advice is to be patient with yourself. It's okay to not be okay. It doesn't matter if it takes ten days or ten years, you just have to go at your own pace. One foot in front of the other, take it day-by-day kind of a situation. It's going to suck, but it will eventually be bearable, even if it's not right now.
I realize it's been a few days now, so I hope you're feeling at least a little better. Take care, anon <3