CatandDog

Hi Ztyu123, Although I can never feel exactly as you do, I have felt very similarly. I still do quite often, but it has been getting further apart the longer it's been since Roxy left me. It feels like I was split into two when she died. The person who I was before, and the thing that I am now. It has been a year and 5 months since she passed and I still cry about her randomly, feel a pit open in my chest where she will never lay again, desperately hope and wish that she will walk around the corner and appear in my doorway, just yearn to have her hair stuck to my clothes one more time. One of the things I feel the most deeply guilty about is that sometimes at night in the month or so leading up to her death, I would wake up to the sound of her seeming like she was about to throw up and I would try to get her out of my bed as quickly as possible so that she wouldn't throw up on my bed. She wasn't about to throw up, she was coughing, trying to breathe around the liquid pooling in her chest cavity, something I learned the same day I heard she only had days to live. I don't think I can ever forgive myself for shooing her away from me during those nights. I can't help but think about what she thought when I did that. But these feelings have been getting easier to handle, they are still heart wrenching, but perhaps they are less heart wrenching than before. A thought came to me today, that if I was given the chance to go back in time, knowing what I know about what will happen, I would still choose to love her just as fiercely as I do despite the pain that I know it will cause and I figure, if I am willing to love her so fiercely again knowing how much I would suffer, then maybe I could love something else just as fiercely. I like to think that Roxy and I were soulmates, and if we were soulmates, then maybe she would be reborn as something different, and if I completely close myself off forever I might never find her again. It has taken me a long time to come to that conclusion though, you shouldn't try and find meaning or purpose from what happened with Jada, it's okay to just feel and feel and feel because you lost someone who is dear to you and you should be allowed to grieve in your own time, on your own terms. I used to think that if I stopped crying about her, I meant that I was starting to care less and I felt so guilty because I never wanted to care less about her, I wanted to be with her and think about her until forever. But I found that the love I felt for Roxy wasn't constrained to whether I cried or not. How could crying ever convey the love I felt for her? I still cry about her, but not as often as I did when she first died, and I think of the crying as a side effect of my feelings for Roxy and I know that side effects don't happen all the time. I don't know if I worded that in a way that makes sense but my point is, love goes beyond crying and just because you stop crying doesn't mean you stop loving. I think the fact that you were close enough with Jada to know something was wrong and that you desperately wanted someone to help you help her shows how much you cared for her and I am sure she knew that as well. It is not your fault that this happened, and it is not your fault for feeling the way you do. Message me if you ever want to talk, or if you want to vent out everything you are angry and upset about to somebody who will listen.

I wrote a post here back in March and I thought that I was starting to feel better about my cat Roxie's death but I still can't talk about her without crying and now even when I think too much about her I find myself crying as well. I've cried every day for the past 4 days and it feels like I am right back where I was all those months ago. It just feels like everything would be so much easier if she was still alive and if I could just cuddle with her one last time I might be able feel better but I know that's impossible so it feels like I will never feel better. It feels like I'm not even the same person as I was when she was here and it feels so lonely not having her with me. Its just so exhausting trying so hard to be happy when she was my favorite thing in the entire world and it feels like nothing is as good as it would be if she were here. I feel like I'm talking in circles here but I figured coming here before seemed to help so maybe it will help again this time.

Wow HG88, thank you for your beautiful reply. This is my first time on a forum like this so it really means a lot to me what you wrote. I read your story about Althea and there were so many feelings and thoughts that I related to, some of the ways you described your bond with her brought me to tears because it was so similar to how I feel about Roxy. I relate so much to your feelings of assuming that we have more time than we were actually given, and having so much more love and time to give that we're unable to. One of the things that scared me the most after hearing of Roxy's diagnosis was that I couldn't remember the last time we laid in bed together with her on my chest because I had always taken it for granted. I had assumed I would have months, years even, to prepare for her death when in reality it had been a sudden surprise. I thought that I wouldn't be able to have one last true cuddle session with her because she was loopy from getting fluid removed from her chest and she was acting like almost a completely different cat. I think 'nice' would be the last word used by someone to describe Roxy. She would bite and scratch your legs when you walked past her on the stairs, bite your hand if you pet her the wrong way, scratch you if you picked her up wrong, and was over all just a mean cat to everyone including, to a much lesser extent, me. But in her last few days it was like a fight was taken out of her. She just seemed too tired to care if you pet her, or hugged her, and if I carried her to my bed and put her on me should would stay. But in some way it didn't feel right to cuddle with her unless she came to me because I knew she would never let me carry her around or hug her if she wasn't feeling sick. The day before she died, I was laying in my bed and tried calling her by whistling like I used to and I think she knew I needed her because she came waddling into my room (she was quite a fat cat) and jumped up onto my bed to cuddle. It was like she could read my mind and knew what I needed her to do before she passed because she laid on my chest and we cuddled and I can now look back on the last time we shared a moment like that because she knew I needed it. In so many ways Roxy helped me as a grow up. She was there with me through middle school, High school, and my freshman year of college and was always a source of comfort for me. I can't help but feel guilty for leaving her while I was in college and I keep thinking about how she must have felt while I was gone. How can a cat fathom what college is, how could she understand that I wasn't leaving her because I wanted to but because I couldn't take her with me. I had so many plans for after college like bringing her with me once I got an apartment, and making memories with her as I grew older but it feels like she'll never understand because she died before I reached a point where I could bring her with me. I feel so guilty for leaving her while I was in the dorms and I know there was nothing I could have done differently but I can't help but think of all the time we could have had. I miss her so much and I wonder if she missed me in a similar way while I was gone. I think the thing that hurts the most is the suddenness of it all. In October 2019 my family put down our 17 year old cat, Snowbell, who was technically my cat that my parents got me when my sister was born but in reality she was the family cat. This may sound somewhat morbid but I think the last five years of her life we thought each one would be her last. She would seem like she was struggling a bit and we would say, "oh I think this year might be it" but somehow she carried on. Her liver was failing and we had to buy her special medicated food but we knew it was only a matter of time and sure enough she stopped eating or drinking and we knew it was time. Putting Snowbell down seemed like the only right thing to do and it truly felt like it was the right time for her. She had lived a long, happy life and now she was old and would start to suffer soon if we didn't end it when we did. I cried when we put her down but it was more of a sadness from all the wonderful memories I had with her. I knew it was the right time for her to go and it brought me comfort that we gave her a happy ending that she deserved. With Roxy, though, it feels like an awful plot twist in some drama. Her death wasn't beautiful, it was a tragedy and I feel like it changes the whole plot, so to say. I thought I would get to see her grow old like Snowbell and it kills me to know that I will never know what she would be like. It like I didn't only lose the present Roxy, but I also lost the future Roxy and all the plans I had that had her in them. I didn't expect to write this much as a response to you but I feel like when I start talking about Roxy I just can't stop, I get so caught up in remembering her and just spill everything out. Thank you for your response though, it really helps to read other people's views on where our pets go and also how they feel. I guess it makes me feel less alone with my overpowering emotions regarding Roxy.

I had to put down my best friend, Roxy, in June of last year (2020) and I still feel intense grief and sadness when I think about her. She was only about 6 years old and seemed perfectly fine until suddenly she wasn't. I noticed she didn't seem like herself when she was cuddling on my chest one day and just seemed too mellow and almost limp, like she was too tired to hold her head up. I had my dad take her to the vet, thinking maybe at worst she had pneumonia or something similar, and I headed off to work for the day. During my break, I called my mom to see what was up with Roxy and by the tone of her voice I knew something was wrong. She had a large tumor on her heart, fluid in her chest cavity, and something-likely a tumor- in her abdomen. It was a death sentence. She had days to live and it felt like my world came crashing down around me. How could she have been so sick and yet appear completely fine for so long? The days leading up to her final one were full of a sense of foreboding doom for what was to come. How could I say goodbye forever to my best friend when we should have had so much more time? It felt like we were connected, two pieces of the same soul who had found each other somehow. She didn't like anyone in my family besides me and she would lay on my chest and look into my eyes it was like I could feel her love for me and I felt like nobody could understand me in the way that she did. Maybe it seems silly to have such a deep emotional connection to a cat but it really felt like we were almost the same on the inside. The day we brought her to the vet for the final time, it was pouring rain. I remember thinking that it was fitting and that maybe my emotions were so strong the universe was feeling them too. When it was over, she was so cold all I wanted to do was keep hugging her, hoping she would warm up but I knew she wouldn't. I didn't want to leave her there on that cold metal table, I didn't want to leave her alone, I didn't want to go back to my empty room where she wouldn't be waiting for me on my bed, but I did. It feels like a part of me went with Roxy when she passed and I feel like there is no way of getting it back. I have been struggling with depression and anxiety ever since she passed and when I feel really bad all I want to do is have her laying on my chest with my hand on her back, and I know it would make me feel better and comfort me but I can't, and I will never be able to have that again. Even though it has been 9 months I still can't talk about her without crying and I still have nights where I cry for hours over her. I don't know what to do, or how to even start moving on because I still feel so lost without her. She was a once in a lifetime cat and it crushes me that I had to lose her so soon. Here is one of my favorite pictures of her, she's on the roof hoping I'll let her in through my window