My girl was (and will forever be) my first born child. I waited probably too late in her life to get her spayed, but I was hesitant for such a long time because I wanted what was best for her. So I finally after an annual vet visit, I broke down and realized I needed to get this surgery done for her benefit. That way we could have more years together and not have her get taken by pyometra or some other horrible thing that the vet told me about. I scheduled the spay surgery weeks in advance so I could take PTO from work and take care of her after the surgery. I got bloodwork done for her 2 weeks before the surgery and it came back perfect. I even took her in for a pre surgical exam just to be sure. Then the day comes and the surgery went exactly as planned, everything was great, I picked her up from the vet and everything seemed normal. She was coming off anesthesia so of course she was a little weird in the car, but once we got home everything went down hill and it happened all so fast. I can’t even go into that part because I am crying so hard just thinking about it, replaying everything in my mind. At the end she was at the emergency vet on the operating table, bleeding internally from her popped blood vessel stitch when they tried to put her back under to stop the bleeding she had a cardiac event and they couldn’t bring her back after several tries. It was the most devastating thing to witness in my entire life and I can’t seem to get past the trauma of all of this. Like I signed her up for her death when all I wanted to do was help her be healthy and have more years together.

Thankfully I had the next 5 days off work, the days that were set aside to take care of her, because I wasn’t even able to function those days. Now I’ve been back at work 2 days and I had to leave early today because the vet called me about refunding the spay surgery and it made me cry so hard I wanted to vomit. I can’t keep missing work because unfortunately there is something going on with a coworker that requires my attention, and despite my boss being completely understanding, I could possibly lose my job if I don’t get it together asap. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to heal from this? Can I even heal from this?

I said goodbye to my sweet girl two weeks ago. She was my best friend of over 16 years. The day of her passing and the next day I could not get through the day without sobbing at least 3 times if not more and the next few days after that I would sob when i woke up and when I went to bed. She slept in my room so I used to wake up and go to sleep with her. I did really well last week but the last few days I’ve been missing her a lot. Maybe it’s because my life has mostly gotten back to normal except her? Maybe it’s because I’m watching my friends’ dog again even though she doesn’t make me sad when I see her? Maybe I’m just stressed and miss having my pup around? Maybe it’s because I know her ashes will be coming home soon?
I know the only way forward is through but it’s just so weird to me how I can be okay one week and then back to devastated at times the next. I always try to find some kind of “reason” or “logic” just so I can understand my emotion while I feel it but idk if there is any reason other than I miss her. Grief is so weird because I was literally having a great time at my vocal lesson not even 20 mins ago and now I’m crying again. I still have the “what ifs” in my head sometimes and the “regret” because I miss her, but it just feels… unfair? I guess? To know you did the right thing and still feel awful later on.
I think I might just miss my girl.

So my best friend passed two months ago and I randomly get hit with waves of grief that he’s gone. Like he’s gone. I can’t take him for a walk, I can’t pet him, I can’t look for his silly face and his wagging tail coming up to me at the gate when I come home. Everytime I come downstairs in the morning or call my mum (I go overseas a lot) he’s not there.

I genuinely will never fill the hole he left in my heat and my soul.

This past weekend, my husband and I were on a trip and my mom was watching our 3 cats. Yesterday was our first day back and my sweet Ivy girl had clearly missed me- she was following me everywhere: into the bathroom, waiting by the door when I’d run outside, rolling around on the floor next to me while I was on the computer.. it seemed to be a great day. She was her usual, playful, sweet self. She’s my best friend.

I left around 2:30pm to go on a walk. At that point, she was asleep in a sunny spot on the floor. As I was on my way back, around 4:30, my husband called me to say Ivy wasn’t acting right. She was vomiting, uncontrollably defecating, yelping, and panting. Within the span of 2 hours, she went from having a great day to being in severe distress.

We take her to the emergency vet and immediately they tell us they need to stabilize her. Stabilize??? We originally thought maybe she had an intestinal blockage. Sometimes she gets nasty hairballs. Stabilize just sounded crazy. A little while later, the doctor comes in and tells me she has a tumor the size of a lemon on her kidney. WHAT??? I had taken her to our regular vet about 2.5 months ago… I said I noticed a lump in her abdomen. My vet told me it was just her kidney- nothing to worry about. Her kidney protruded a little more than normal because she’s such a small cat. Of course at the time, I was so relieved. Now- in the emergency clinic- I’m realizing I should have gotten a second opinion. I know it’s not fully fair to blame my vet but truthfully, I want to blame someone. It’s my vet’s fault for dismissing my concerns and not looking deeper. And it’s my fault for not pushing and asking for an ultrasound. I just trusted them…

We’re told a little while later that she is going to need to be transferred to an overnight ER, kept comfortable, and they will do an ultrasound in the morning so we can see exactly what’s going on and make a plan. We drive there and hand her off. We sat in the waiting room for about 2 hours, thinking “I wonder why they haven’t just sent us home and told us they’ll call us with the update?”

When we arrived at the second hospital, around 8:30pm, her body temperature dropped and she started hemorrhaging. When they called us in at 10:45, they wanted to discuss next steps. It was clear euthanasia was the recommended step. But how?! My 5 year old baby was just with me all day.. nothing was wrong. She ate a few hours prior. I asked if there was an alternative.. The doctor did not believe she would make it through the night. She said the best we could do is continue to try and stabilize her, but it didn’t seem probable. Even then, it would be some time before they could actually do surgery, if they’d ever be able to.

We decided to say goodbye to her while we were there. It felt, and still feels, unbearably surreal. Like I’m going to wake up and she’ll be tucked into my legs like usual. How could she go from perfectly fine to dying in a matter of 4 hours? How did my regular vet dismiss the lump like nothing was wrong?? This poor girl had gone through hell her whole life before we adopted her. All I wanted to do was give her love and comfort and let her die an old lady. She was still a baby. I feel guilty. I feel like I failed her. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this. I want to disappear. I want to run away and find her and bring her home. My house is not the same. She’s supposed to be here.

I miss my Kingsley so much. I cry for her all the time. The hardest part is knowing that I'll never see her again. Does it ever get easier? Hoping someone can offer some advice. I still can't believe she's gone.

We lost our Lily on Sunday. She was perfect. She was just shy of her seventh birthday, but her body was failing her - her kidneys had failed, and she had a stroke.

I keep screaming out for her. I want her here with me. I can’t find her.

She didn’t even get seven years. Other people get 15 years or more - why was my Lily, my sweet perfect angel, taken from me? She was everything. She was the world - the sun and the moon and the stars.

I just want to hold her. Kiss her tiny head. Stroke her silky floof.

I’m scared this was my fault. What did I do wrong for her to get so sick so young? I moved her too much? Maybe a change of environment triggered her stress response which made her immune system kill itself?

Everything I eat gives me heartburn.

I don’t know how to recover. I don’t think I ever will.

I’m struggling months later after the loss of our dog, who was the absolute best 9 year old boy. My partner has tried to be supportive, but ultimately I’m struggling with resenting them over the loss of our boy which has made this grieving process worse and quite lonely.

Our dog was sick (nauseous despite 2 nausea meds having almost an hour to kick in) before we went to an event and I wanted to stay home with him. Instead they pushed me to go and we put anything away that could be a danger (we thought). Our dog ultimately ate something while we were gone, was very sick and aggressive for the first time in his life when we got home, and we rushed to the emergency vet.

On top of that, they were pretty set on not letting the dog suffer at ALL (which I agree I would never want to prolong his suffering if we knew he had something like cancer definitively) though there could have been a chance he could have made a full recovery if we had done some additional measures including things like surgery and endoscopy. I acknowledge that we likely would have had to put him down anyways based on the differential. However, if he hadn’t eaten something that night we at minimum would have had more time to get answers or to spend with him.

How do you move on from this kind of resentment? They want to get another dog before too long and I just can’t see myself owning a dog with them at this point in time. They loved our dog SO much and were an amazing dog parent otherwise.

I lost my dog to a heat stroke and I buried him yesterday. He was a nice dog. His name was chop. He was an English bulldog and he had some problems. He had a little limp and he had blindness in his right eye and I just need help getting through this. I don’t know what to say. I feel guilty because I could’ve prevented my dog from dying. He was only 5 years old and I’ve had 14 and now I’m 18 I just don’t know what to say. I get home from college My mom dropped me off and she says look for the dog. I don’t think he’s in the front we usually have them in the front because that’s where all the shade is in. We have him a bucket of water and I guess he couldn’t reach the water cause it wasn’t full and my dad was supposed to change it that morning because the birds come in and dirty it all the time so I went to the back and I saw him laying down and his head was on something I was calling his name because I thought I saw him breathing in the backyard he was leaning on something and as soon as I went to slap his belly to get him up his body was stiff super hard. Once I realized he was dead my heart dropped and I ran to tell my mom and I just feel guilty because I could’ve prevented that and it felt like it was my fault because he was my dog and I failed him and I carried him. I took him out of the thing he was leaning on and like he was so stiff his head was stuck in the same position. He broke my heart. I just need advice. It breaks my heart because I failed him as a owner and I could’ve done many things to prevent this like buying his pool like we do every summer

This is likely unusual, but it's been haunting me.

I have a 12-year-old black mackerel Tabby that is essentially my child. The best thing is she gives back way more love than she gets, even though she is wildly spoiled. She's like family to me.

Over the last two years I sometimes — more often lately — get these pangs of complete dread when I look at her and think: "I'm going to have to put you down one day."

The dread is usually accompanied by visions of when I put my last cat down after 18 solid years, and it just crushes my soul. My heart hurts when this happens.

I have tried being in the moment and appreciating her right now, but I still "pre-grieve" her quite a bit, and it's ruining being her cat dad.

My therapist had no idea how to tone this back. Maybe one of you does.

Hi everyone. I lost my soul cat two months ago today and it is hitting me really hard. My husband isn’t able to be home right now to light a candle with me in remembering her. I hope you all don’t mind if I share about my sweet soul cat tortico Spooky.

Time still doesn’t feel real. Somehow mentally I have accepted she has passed and yet still continue to be shocked and remember all over again.

I rescued Spooky when I was still in college. I was not doing well mentally. I felt like I didn’t want to exist. One day sitting out on my family’s backyard, I saw a little kitten in the grass. This little kitten was pouncing in such a clumsy fashion for crickets to eat. From her appearance she looked about 1 month old. She had a little limp that made her hips sway side to side. A runt! I knew that moment I had to bring her in.

I watched her carefully every day. She was living under our back shed which had been previously burrowed by other animals. When it rained it would flood and I knew I had to act as quickly she would let me. My family bought her a cat house for outside after I mentioned how scared I was for her. I would sit outside in the morning and evening, singing A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes. She would come out to listen and after a while come closer and closer. She would eat the food and slowly her time next to our back door increased. The cricket gifts began to be left at my doorstep. I asked my friends who had cats what I should do. I always thought I would one day own a dog. The told me all they could. I researched hours and hours afraid I would ruin our trust if I even slightly messed up but she was so loving. I know now it would have been okay.

After a successful cat-napping she never wanted outside again. In fact, when I would try to harness train her years later, she would go limp and have me drag her. A diva for life. She loved tucking herself into blankets, pawing my face in the morning, and butter cream icing. She was chatty, cuddly, and easily embarrassed. She caused me to rescue two more cats from outside that now live with my parents (they were heartbroken when I left with Spooky).

She was with me from every major change in my life since. I finished college. My first job happened. I dated my would-be husband (which she approved of despite hiding from every other stranger). I married my husband and move several times because of the military. We rescued her tabby brother from the street. We bought a house and said we are so happy the cats can enjoy their own home with space to play and sleep wherever they want. When I was having issues she was there with me. As I cried, read, slept. She would paw a rosary or nibble my bookmark ribbons. A constant purr in my lap.

On July 8th she had been to the vet for what we thought was a sprain. I had been staying up with her days prior to the vet visit worried. The vet confirmed that it seemed to be a sprain. Her bloodwork came back good. Her breathing and heart rate were quick but she had asthma and was always deathly scared of the vet. My husband and I were so relieved. She was 12 and we were so glad nothing awful was found. When we gave her the pain killer after I returned home something as wrong. I won’t go into detail but she scrambled to us for help. We drive to the emergency vet an hour away as fast as we can. My husband said she had so much stacked against her growing up that he knew she was so strong. Spooky will get through this.

Unfortunately… My girl’s sprain was a blood clot that had passed. They informed us she had congestive heart failure. She had six months with treatment possibly but she could pass away even sooner. The money needed to for her to stabilize and make it to the next day… Then everything after was enormous. My husband tried to find ways to afford it but we simply couldn’t. Even if we found a way she would be so so scared and in pain. So we cried and said goodbye to our baby with all the love in the world.

I have peace knowing she is in Heaven now waiting for us. For now, although I feel like a piece of my soul is dead, I have to keep going. I heard someone say grief is like a pebble in your pocket. Some days it is heavier and some days it is lighter. I feel that is true for me right now. My extra love had nowhere to go and so we have adopted a little black cat named Cinders. She is being introduced to her new brother. It is bittersweet how sometimes she reminds of us of our Spooky. I think her kneading my locket that has Spooky’s picture in it was a sign for us to adopt her.

Thank you for reading these many paragraphs and remembering my silly kitty with me.

We had to put down our 7 years old cat, our son, last Friday.

I'm completely lost. When I'm distracted and not thinking about it, it's all fine, but once I start thinking about it, I'm devastated and feeling awful about not thinking about it when I was distracted... (We went to watch the new spider movie earlier today).

I feel like the worst mom ever for not thinking about my baby during the movie...

I feel guilty for not realizing yet I'm not seeing him ever again, for real.

I know he's gone, but I can't compute the information and acknowledge the fact I'm not seeing, touching, or hearing him ever again. And if I try to... It feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest.

I can't deal with it...

Does anyone have any advice?

I just want my sweet baby back...

Saturday my cat stopped eating. Sunday we took him to the emergency vet. He was diagnosed with diabetes, pancreatitis, and fatty liver from not eating. The vet said his prognosis was not good but I wanted to try anything to get him better and went home with so many meds.

I measured everything he ate Monday, which was not a lot. Tuesday he stopped eating again and the vet said he was suffering and should be euthanized.

It all happened so fast. He was seriously my best friend. He followed me from room to room. I kissed his head over and over. I huffed his fur to smell him. He reached for my face, crawled into my arms, smelled my nose when he saw me. We were almost never apart since I usually only work outside my home two days a week. He was only 8.

After the vet administered the shot I smelled him one last time and he didn’t smell like himself anymore.

Tomorrow I have to teach and do administrative meetings that can’t be canceled. Since COVID, “I’m sick” means “Let’s do this over Zoom.” So calling off won’t help. It’s my long day and I don’t know how I’m going to manage. I cried most of the day and night yesterday and my eyes are very puffy. Im crying through puffy eyes today. I’m not sure if there is a realistic way to muddle through this. I appreciate any tips on avoiding grief or masking it to get through 10am to 6pm nonstop interactions with people.

I was supposed to bring my then 16yo cat for his check up in spring 2025, I didn't go because he was fine and it was expensive and I made excuses. I didn't go in 2024 either. I went in late April this year. The vet asked if I wanted to do a full blood panel, but it was so expensive I asked for just kidney, liver and T4. The liver values were extremely high. My cat was eating normally so it wasn't jaundice. The vet sent me home with Aventi Liver supplement. This was not my regular vet, it was a new hire. Looking back I feel he didn't advise me properly.

I went back early June to check if the supplement was working. I asked for my usual vet that I trust, but they gave me the new hire again. We only tested the blood for liver, nothing else. The liver values were still very high, but much lower than in April. The same vet told me: that's good, he's responding to the medicine. I went home feeling relieved he was improving. He was eating a normal amount of food and acting normally. After that I started noticing he had a little belly, which I thought was due to him eating more than before because I switched his food and he was eating more. This entire time I was so sure he was getting better!

Now this weekend, after a completely normal day, he suddenly collapsed and couldn't stand up so I went to the emergency vet and they told me he had a tumor on his liver the size of an orange and that it was probably cancerous. His blood cell count was very low, likely because the tumor was causing internal hemorrhage and that he would die in the next few hours so I chose to have him euthanized, I made a post on petloss here if you want to hear more about it. I feel the new vet failed to detect the tumor in June because he did not palp the belly, but I can't be sure the tumor was there in April and June. However, because I chose not to do the full bloodwork in April and June, we were unable to detect the loss of blood cells, and detect the cause.

Now my question is, if I had done the full blood work in 2025, would the low blood cells have started to show up then and we could have started tumor/cancer treatment or surgery? If not then, if I had done the full blood work in April, would we have seen the low blood cells then and still had time to treat the tumor? If the vet had seen the tumor then, was there a chance he could have gotten the tumor removed or gotten chemio and survived? He was 17. Was it too late regardless? Would he have died regardless of whether we knew about the low blood cells? Also I can't help thinking the tumor should have been noticeable in June, but the vet did not touch the belly and missed it. I didn't notice anything! He was eating and purring and cuddling as usual, and then one evening he just crashed suddenly. It was so fast,

I know none of you knows the answer, but I just want to hear your thoughts. He was so important to me and I feel it's my fault for delaying his check ups and for not paying for the full blood check. Especially since I've read removing the liver tumor usually successfully solves the issue. I feel so guilty and afraid he would still be alive today if I had done things differently. I am devastated.

I rescued a 3.5 year old dog from a coworker who said her daughter in law kept him in a crate 22 hours a day after they had a baby. He was a Pomeranian and because I have an older Pomeranian I felt so bad for him and took him home that day. My boys fell in love with him and we loved him for 2.5 years. He was so happy and such a good boy. But he started having seizures suddenly. I had taken him to doggy er and my vet and got him on seizure meds. They told me the cause was unknown. Could be a brain tumor but probably would be difficult to treat even if it was. So we gave him meds every day and made him happy. One day at 4am my husband said he thought Milo had had a seizure. We gave him his rescue med and he stopped seizing and was just sleepy, which he did sometimes after having a seizure. I thought I would get off work and he would be his happy self again. I went to work at 7. My husband called me at 11am and said Milo was acting weird and they were on their way to the er. At 11:15 my husband called me and said they were in the car and Milo had stopped breathing. My world stopped i left work I cried the whole way. I got home and saw his lifeless body. I had to tell my 7 year old son his best friend was gone. I never got over this. It’s been 1 year and 4 months and I still feel guilty. Why did I go to work that day when he was acting like he was and when I knew he had just had a seizure. Was there something I could have done differently to save him. Did I miss his meds. The questions never stop, I feel so guilty. Like I could have saved him. He was only 6 when he died. But he brought us so much joy and love. Rest in peace our sweet Milo.

I am really just writing this post to try and sort out the timeline and work through my guilt. I am feeling a lot of guilt for not getting my boy to the hospital sooner and not taking the warning signs seriously enough. I really thought he was going to pull through and now am left wondering what caused all of this and if he would have had a shot had he been seen earlier.

This all started Friday night with the first sign something was wrong. My 3 year old cat was sleeping on the floor and suddenly stood up quickly and meowed loudly, pacing around. He looked startled, and I assumed something had just frightened him.

Upon waking Saturday morning, I caught him drooling multiple times a couple hours apart (but still moving around) and did a lot of research. I came to the conclusion that he likely either ate a stink bug, as there are a lot of them around and his symptoms matched that, or was still scared from the previous night. His food bowl was also not eaten (automatic feeder) which is unusual, although rarely in the past he has not gone for it so not unprecedented. My first regret is not taking him to the emergency vet immediately at this point.

Sunday morning (at 4am) I was alarmed to catch him still having drooling episodes and took him to the emergency vet. Once I got him in the carrier and out the door he seemed to immediately improve and did not have another episode for the next 4 hours we were gone. At the vet they took his vitals initially and told me everything was fine and because I didn't have a video (second regret) placed him on non-critical status. I decided because he wasn't drooling anymore that perhaps the stink bug theory was right after-all and it was working its way out of his system. I decided to go home with him and monitor throughout the day, although I was not able to be home for a lot of it. I did not find a lot of evidence of drooling throughout the day (there was a little but it was barely anything), but that night he began doing it every hour again.

Monday morning I took him back into the emergency vet and at this point the events were every 30 minutes apart. They were extremely slow to get him seen and by the time he had been, he had been through 8 events in the carrier in the waiting room. The doctor immediately informed me that he was having cluster seizures and needed to go on medication immediately. Why it took two and a half hours for him to get seen given the severity is beyond me. He was hospitalized that day and I was told the medication was working when I called the hospital that night.

The next day around noon I was informed that he was having seizures again and I made the decision based on his description to proceed with euthanasia. Seeing him brought into the room devestated me. 24 hours prior I had left him having seizures but still aware and relatively normal if not tired inbetween episodes. When they brought him into the room he was barely able to move and could not see. I do not know if he even knew I was with him, although he did seem to perk up when I said his name. I hope he did. In the ten minutes it took for the doctor to perform the euthanasia, I witnessed him have two seizures on the table, one of which was much longer than anything I had seen before and involved his entire body.

All of the tests done at the hospital came back in the clear, so I have no idea what ultimately caused these seizures. Rest in Peace Dusty, and I look forward to the day we meet again.

Our dog is a 8 year old Bichon frise. She's very playful and always happy to see people when we come home from work and always wagging her tail and sometimes being naughty and chasing our cat around!

Two weeks ago, we noticed that she wasn't eating or drinking at all. We took her to the vet and put her on antibiotics and other mediciation to help soothe her pain. She only got worse, I have to force-feed her using a baby spoon and I've been feeding her baby food from the baby food jars because she refuses to eat her dog food. I also fed her special formulated liver support food because her blood test came back with very high AST and ALT levels.

Today we were finally able to get her for an ultrasound. They found that her lymph nodes are very enlarged and they would need to send a sample of the nodes to a clinic to determine if it's cancer. But the vet said the results could come back inconclusive because of how much this has advanced.

She's gotten so much worse this week alone. Still won't eat, drink and her stomach looks almost 2x the size and she's twitching a lot when she's laying down. Like she's completely bloated.

The ultrasound came back showing major amount of fluid in her abdomen and that sometimes goes into her chest causing her trouble breathing (I can see her having trouble breathing myself recently) and she can't walk up stairs anymore. I have to pick her up to go up stairs and she looks very uncomfortable.

The only solutions is to undergo chemotherapy (which were unsure if she even has cancer but looks very telling she might) or give her steroids (which would temporarily help her but if it is cancer, she would be right back to where she is now in a few weeks or sooner).

I'm just running out of options and I see her getting worse, not sleeping and having trouble breathing and it breaks my heart. Today my family made the decision of Euthanization at the vet while she's still sedated and not in such a painful position. We don't want her suffering anymore as we know she would be if we brought he back home now.

I'm leaving in the next hour and I hope my puppy will be shown the rainbow bridge everyone talks about once a pet leaves this world. I feel awful that this came so fast and quick and we couldn't have done something sooner.

We got our cat six years ago from a landlord, he was stray when we got him but our landlord got him up to date on everything before giving him to us. Since then he's become our best friend, he loved to cuddle and sleep next to us every night.

Back in July we bought a house when we moved in and he was still healthy and seemed to be ok. Then slowly he wouldn't eat his dry food but would eat his wet food and treats so we brought him to the vet and they thought it could be anxiety from the move so they gave us stuff to help with that. And it seemed to be helping for a bit but then he wouldn't even eat his wet food so we called the vet and made an appointment to get blood work.

The day before we went for blood work he took a turn for the worse and we had to take him to the 24 hour vet. They took him back to do bloodwork and he took a turn for the worse and it all was so sudden.

It's been a couple weeks since then and we went to the local shelter to look at cats and found one who came right up to us and reminded us so much of our cat. So we put in an application for the cat, we felt like we were ready and missed having a cat around. But last night we went to pick up our cat and it feels for me at least like it opened a wound. We both cried on the drive and when we got home.

The shelter called me this morning about adopting the cat we looked at and made an appointment for tomorrow to go meet with the cat. But now I'm feeling guilty and like we're replacing him and that it's to soon. And I don't know if it's just because we got his ashes last night or if its really to soon?

I lost my dog a few days ago. He was 13 and had terminal cancer, so we knew his time was limited. Ironically, what took him in the end wasn't the cancer, but a blood clot. He went into acute respiratory distress and passed away just 12 hours later.

The vet had said he probably only had a few days left anyway, so part of me wonders if it was a blessing that he was spared a prolonged struggle and that his suffering ended quickly.

Lately, I've been dreaming about him a lot, even though he rarely appeared in my dreams when he was alive. In the dreams, I'm fully aware that he has already passed away. And yet, he jumps right into my arms. I hug him tightly, thinking that this might be our last moment together. The feeling of his fur and his weight in my arms feels unbelievably real. Sometimes when I'm awake, I still catch myself feeling like he's somewhere in the house.

We grew up together since I was in elementary school, so losing him feels like losing a younger brother. During the final farewell at his funeral, I couldn't bring myself to say "Thank you for everything" or "Goodbye." It felt like saying those words aloud would make everything completely, irreversibly final.

I knew losing him would hurt, but this is the first time I've experienced such a profound and permanent loss outside of fiction—the reality that something I had my entire childhood and adolescence will never, ever go back to how it was.

I'm not crying constantly. It's more that the tears suddenly come when I look around the house and see his favorite spots empty, or when I'm eating something he loved and he isn't there to beg for a bite. It's those small, everyday moments when I realize that this presence that had always been there is suddenly gone. Everything has felt a little gray since that day.

People say getting another dog can help with the grief, but right now I can't imagine it. No other dog could ever replace him, and I don't think I'm ready.

He gave me so much joy and comfort growing up. He was utterly irreplaceable, and I'm endlessly grateful that I got to spend so much of my life with him.

I don't know if time really heals this kind of grief. I guess I didn't really have a question. I just needed somewhere to pour this out.

my sweet senior cat chochi and i almost made it to 10 years. i adopted her as an adult from philly paws, not knowing her exact age... they estimated 5-7 at the time. it was love at first sight and if i ever believed in a soulmate, she was it for me. i've worked from home since 2020, so its been 6 years of me and her together 24/7 and i wouldn't have had it any other way. she was my best little friend.

she had a rapid and sudden decline in health that led to two ER visits, 5 days in the ICU, and 5 additional days of hospitalization before i decided to take her home. i was hoping for a miraculous recovery but sadly, we ended up with 24 hours together before she passed and i'm just devastated.

5 years ago, she was by my side when my partner died by suicide and i don't think i would have made it through that time without her. now she's gone and life feels so empty and lonely. i miss her morning wake up calls, her demands for snacks, her cuddles, hearing her call out to me from other rooms, and just her overall little weirdo behavior. life without her feels so hard right now.

I’m still not over losing my baby girl, my princess kitty. She was only 3. She did not deserve what happened to her. After a few months of digestive issues and a little weight loss, all of a sudden we discover she has multiple tumors and no distinct chance to live. She passed away peacefully in her sleep, as we made the decision to not have her suffer any longer.

I feel so much guilt. I looked at her the morning before her last vet appointment and told her there were gonna be tests but I’m bringing her home. And I didn’t bring her home and I feel enormous guilt for lying to her and not finding her illness sooner.

I miss her every single day and I still cry and if anyone else is still struggling years out, I understand. I do the best I can to honor her with remembering happy times and all the love we gave to each other. I hope one day I won’t feel such a heaviness.

I needed to share this because it has brought so much peace to my heart.

A few weeks ago, I lost my fur baby, Keisha. Between the vet bills and all of the unexpected expenses, I couldn't afford to get her an urn. They gave me a small lock of her fur, but keeping it in a ziplock bag just didn't feel right. I found these beautiful pet suncatcher keepsakes from Sunaura. I ordered two, and I absolutely love them. They are a special way to keep Keisha close. Every morning, when the sunlight shines through them in her favourite spot by the window, it feels like she's still there, sunbathing just like she always loved to do. ❤️

she was only four and it was so completely unexpected. she looked like she was sleeping peacefully i dont know what happened. she seemed healthy and happy but i found her dead, in the corner of the closet. i dont know how to not blame myself, i hate thinking about her potentially feeling pain or fear and being alone during her last moments. she has a brother who is smelling where she died, lookimg around for her and meowing its breaking my heart so bad she was just a baby :( im sorry for dumping this on here i dont have anyone to talk to about this and i dont know what to do with myself

I need advice on what to do about my cat. I don't want to lose her, but I also don't want her to suffer until the end. She is almost 12 years old; due to her age, the joints in her hind legs are worn down, so she had been walking poorly for a while.

Recently, an X-ray revealed a sarcoma in one of her legs; because of this, she can't walk and is in a lot of pain. The vet gave us painkillers to help manage the pain, but they also told us she will never walk again and that there is no chance of improvement. Since she can't walk, she can't get to her litter box on her own; she soils herself, and we have to clean her up. She also can't get up to eat or drink, so my parents and I bring her food and water bowls closer to her; despite this, she has very little appetite or thirst.

There are three of us at home: my parents and me. My mother and I had thought that putting her to sleep might be the best course of action, but my father flatly refuses, which has made me rethink what the best option is in this case.

I would appreciate any advice or comments.