Our pet Catos.

This is a short personal blog. It’s about our cat and about his belongings… I feel that I’m reversing the roles today, to be the one needing support to declutter. It’s a complicated story which started out when we got our cat through my brother who lives in Athens and who found him abandoned in his garden a year ago. Catos with his comedy name turned out to be a super fun and sociable, really lovely cat. He was with us for just under a year, but he was also almost always a poorly cat, sneezing, underweight, regular visits to the vets, on and off courses of antibiotics until he became resistant to them and questions of underlying immunocompromised symptoms arose. Towards the end he became too unwell to continue. He stopped eating and last week our vet courageously explained to us that the kindest thing was to have him put down. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of humans’ vs animals or pets, I think we can all sympathise with how hard it is to decide to euthanise a cat to whom the whole family has become very attached. Never mind the eight- and eleven-year-old kids, it’s also myself and my husband who found it hard.

Shortly after I got back from the vets, I emptied the litter tray. I carried some of the first items that couldn’t be donated and were to be thrown away in our outdoor bins and was reminded of the moments we’d bought them, in our happy flurry of consumerism. We were so excited at the prospect of having our first pet in our lives, it made me feel sad about the fast turnaround of these items that had once been necessary functional things, now a year later, made completely redundant, not good enough to rehome.

The second category of Catos’ items was easy to discard because I identified a good home: all the frozen cat food, the biscuits and the litter was to go to my super lovely friend with two kittens. She ended up distributing a lot of it amongst her local groups. In contrast to above, this exchange felt positive. I’ve often seen this same sense of relief in my clients when we’ve identified a good home for an item. It feels like finally, something circularly good has come out of the guilt or shame of discarding something material. And out of this comes that positive, lighter feeling — one that is encouraging to keep going on the decluttering journey.

And now? We’re at home still with our cat basket and squeaky mouse toys lingering in the living room. My son saw the basket a few days after Catos had died and as his memories flooded back, he had a big sob. I felt guilty for not having removed everything out of sight but I didn’t want to feel bad. I think that the process is important, very fortunately for them, this is the first time my kids have encountered any kind of death, and taking the time to feel sad was — in our opinion — part of this learning process. They say the first pet that dies is a valuable life lesson for kids.

So at the moment, we’re caught in a limbo. We have plans to do some nice things with the cat’s material belongings, to choose one of the cat’s toys each, to move the basket into the attic (husband would like a new cat by winter!) and to plant something in the garden, but let’s just be patient for a little while. I think it’s interesting to reflect on the effect this little cat had on us as a family through his belongings and although in a healthy way, I’m looking forward to clearing out our cat’s things and anticipating that moment of closure, we’re not going to rush it either.

(this piece of writing was created without using AI)