The Grief I Deserved

I used to low-key judge pet people.

When a coworker would miss work or dash home crying because their dog was dying or their cat needed surgery, I’d offer sympathy, but in my head, I was thinking it's just an animal, it ain't that deep.

Except, of course, it is, I just didn’t know that yet.

When I met my husband, we were firmly on the same page. "I don’t want any more pets, I don’t want any more kids, and I don’t want a white picket fence and meatloaf every Sunday kind of life,“ he said.

Amen, I thought. Where do I sign?

Fast-forward to today: We have all of that shit now.
And I mean that with all the love in the world, but that is our current reality.

When our daughter was in high school, he surprised me with, "I’m ready for another dog.” This, from a man who’d spoken about his last one with the kind of reverence usually reserved for fallen comrades in war.

Before I knew him, his dog's death had devastated him, and he’d sworn for years he wouldn’t go through that again. But now he was ready, and so we adopted our Nala. Half-husky, half terrier, fully allergic to almost everything.

Seriously—this is a dog on prescription food, special shots, the whole package, and she still drops gas that can clear a building. We’ve tried everything. Probiotics. Pumpkin. Meds. Switching proteins. Nothing helps.

She’ll stare you dead in the face while you’re eating dinner and let one rip that makes you question if love really is unconditional.

She was wild as a June bug at first, bolting through doors and chewing through furniture, but she mellowed out with time and training. She’s loyal, sweet, watchful, and adores my husband.

The rest of us are a close second, but we don’t mind.

She was our only pet for years.
And then came Molly.

My brother-in-law died tragically after years of addiction and self-neglect. They found his body in his apartment after a welfare check, but there was no sign of his precious Molly.

She was eventually found cowering behind a toilet. She’d hid in the apartment the entire time, terrified and silent while strangers trickled in and out.

The plan was to give her to my mother-in-law, who’d wanted Molly as one last connection to her son. But, quelle surprise, someone in the family had a problem with that, because of course they did.

But before anything could be resolved, we found out my mother-in-law had late-stage cancer. She never got to say goodbye to her son, and she never got the cat.

So Molly became ours. Which really meant, mostly mine. I didn’t want her at first. I love cats, but my husband is terribly allergic to them, so why would I want one?

Molly had good reasons to be wary of us. She came to us filthy, matted, and scared. She hadn’t eaten in who knows how long before she finally showed herself. Molly didn’t scratch or bite, but she made it clear from the get-go: don’t test me.

I should’ve known from the start what we were in for. We planned to drive her home in a crate like responsible adults. But she managed to Houdini her way out of that crate and up front with us twice before we'd even gotten out of the neighborhood.

So we gave up and she curled up under my legs for the whole 7-hour drive, staring up at me like she already knew she owned me.

That was Molly in a nutshell: stubborn, unimpressed by rules, and always determined to do things her way.

At the time, we were empty nesters, and I worked from home. So I gave her plenty of space; I just fed her, said hello, let her be, and went about my day.

Then one day, she started following me around the cabin.

Soon she was everywhere, threading herself around my ankles, curling up at my feet, watching me work like she was memorizing my every movement.

And then one night, she shocked me by jumping into my lap and curling up like she’d always belonged there. From that moment on, she was mine.

I didn’t know it then, but she was the last thing I’d get to call mine for a long time.

She tolerated my husband, bless his heart (I think all the sneezing had something to do with it...and between us, why do all dads sneeze like they're being exorcised?), but she kept everyone else at bay.

Nala, bless her gentle heart, just wanted to be friends, but Molly would hiss at her like it was her job. Nala would retreat, dejected, every time, which just broke my heart.

But she loved me, so for a while I became that woman; you know, the one with the mean cat that hissed all the time and everyone hated? Yeah, that was me.

Molly was a fat, grumpy mess who destroyed furniture and woke me at 5 AM every morning, demanding food like she paid rent.

And she was smart – annoyingly smart. If I ignored her, she’d shimmy under my bed, stretch her full weight against it, and push until the platform under me literally vibrated.

And she was a big’un, so that bed shook like a tuning fork. My wake-up call was a daily message of I own you.
And she did.

She loved open windows. Even in winter, if the sun was hitting just right, she’d wedge herself into the sill, looking like a loaf of bread and zoning out for hours.

At night, she’d obediently sleep on the floor by my side of the bed, but every chance she could, especially when my husband was away on business, she’d jump into bed with me like it was her rightful place.

And I’d sigh, knowing I’d have to wash everything before he got back because of his allergies, but I let her stay anyway. She was pretty smug about it, too.

She’d only sit on my lap if we were alone. If anyone walked in, she’d leap off like she’d just been caught in a compromising position, like, No one can ever see me be loving!

And she'd grind her teeth all the time, making this little sound you could only hear when it was really quiet. Like tinnitus, but weirder.

She was also weirdly healthy, until one day she wasn’t.

She stopped eating. Just…stopped.
The vet said her liver was failing, and they didn’t know why. I asked her what she would do if it were her cat. She said, “Get her tested.”

Hindsight is always 20:20, and I know now I should've just taken her home. I felt it in my gut when the vet simply said, “I’m so sorry”.

I saw it in Molly's eyes when I put her back in the carrier. I heard it in the voice in my head: Take the pictures. Get the cuddles. This is it. This is the last time.

My husband and I had long ago made an agreement: when it came to pets, there'd be no heroic measures, no thousand-dollar maybes. But when push came to shove, there we were, in an emergency clinic 40 miles away, desperate for answers.

But they didn’t know what was wrong either. But they did know how to stall and how to charge for it.

I kept waiting for someone to say, It’s time. Instead, they kept offering hope in carefully worded, thousand-dollar increments while she continued to decline.

Maybe in another chapter of our lives, we could've kept going and pushed even further for answers.

But we're raising someone else's children now. Their needs come first, whether we're ready or not. And that choice, no matter how financially responsible, shredded me.

To this day, I still think about what else we could've done differently.

Instead of putting her through more inconclusive tests, we brought her home.

But she wasn't herself anymore. She was already gone before she died in my arms a few hours later.

Her death wasn’t peaceful or gentle. It wasn’t like in the movies, where the pet just blinks slowly and slips away quietly in your arms.

No, it felt almost violent. She seized, she spasmed, then she stretched to her full length like she was being electrocuted before going stiff and quiet.

I learned that it’s just a reflex, a final misfiring of nerves that looks awful but isn’t conscious or painful.

But tell that to the person holding her when it happens.

The kids were with us while it happened, and I tried to hold it together. I didn't want to get emotional in front of them over a cat.

But the youngest wrinkled her nose as I cradled my dead cat, both of us soiled with her vomit. “Ew, that’s gross,” she said.

I know she wasn't saying it to be cruel; it was just her without a filter, as usual. She’s still learning how to name her emotions and read a room, and most days, we meet her where she is.

But that single comment felt like such a slap in the face after all the work we'd done to avoid moments like that.

And so I sat on the floor of my kitchen with that cat in my arms and bawled like I’d lost a child. That day, I finally learned what grieving a pet was all about.

Afterwards, we wrapped Molly's body in a blanket and drove her back to that same hospital. Forty-five minutes of silence, except for the sound of our own breaths as I held her in my lap, stroking her fur, and whispered a thousand apologies she couldn’t hear.

I’m sorry I didn’t listen to my gut. I’m sorry I left you at the hospital. I’m sorry I let our hope take away your peace.

We handed her off to a sympathetic stranger in scrubs, but that place will always be the place where I lost her twice.

I’ll always regret that.

Every morning, like clockwork, Molly would race down the stairs ahead of me, beat me to the kitchen, and perch by her food bowl, watching, judging, making sure I opened her little tin of Fancy Feast before I could even reach for a K-Cup.

She’d eat, and I’d sit next to her with my coffee. And when she finished, she’d curl up beside me, purring like an engine while I scrolled on my phone.

We did that every day for years.

That first morning after she was gone…no little face by my bed, no cuddling while I drank my coffee…it hurt.

I couldn’t even sit in our spot anymore.  It felt so wrong that I got up and moved to the couch, and I’ve never sat in our spot since.

I bought her pawprint in stone, a lock of fur, and a small urn in a velvet bag. All things I once called manipulative cash grabs.

Yeah, I know, I’m a hypocrite.
But I’m all the better for it now.

People have already started suggesting I get another cat, but I don’t want one, not now, maybe not ever.

Whether you lose a cat or dog, a person, or even a stage of life, grief always changes something inside you.

When someone or something’s presence is that ingrained into the minutiae of your day, you don’t just lose them.
You lose your whole sense of balance for a while.

Molly’s death hit me like a truck.
Nala, on the other hand, could not have cared less.

Nala's a sweetheart of a dog that just intuitively knows when something's off. She'll sit next to you when you're sad, rest her head on your knee to show her love.

After Molly died, I was positive she’d be sad, sniff around Molly’s old spots, probably whine a little.

Nope. She slept like a log and farted through my grief like she'd never even met the cat. It was jarring, honestly. Like, damn, girl, she’s just…dead to you? Literally?

It also reminded me that Nala’s eventual loss will hurt me, too. We’ll all feel that one. She’s been here through every chapter of this crazy life of ours.

But she’s getting older now. Her face is aging. She moves more slowly and sleeps longer. And I’m not ready to imagine the day she isn’t here to wake us up or stand guard at the door or fart through a movie like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving.

So to anyone I ever silently judged for falling apart over a pet: I get it now.
I’m sorry it took me so long.

I thought I was above that kind of grief.
But I somehow forgot that love eventually makes fools of us all.

🐾 If this story hits close to home, you’re not alone.
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Recommended Reads

• If you’ve ever cried over a pet, you’ll feel Triggers and Treasures.
• This kind of grief sits in the background of Beautiful Lies.
• For the comic relief version of coping, try Sad Woman, Happy Coffee.

Heather P. is an essayist and longtime ghostwriter publishing darkly funny, brutally honest stories about trauma, resilience, and healing.

Her platform, Unfinished Business, has been read in over 30 countries for its dark humor, emotional precision, and raw essays on reinvention, grief, and the absurdity of real life.