We lost Bella four months ago today. I think Traci is ready for a new cat, but while I know that a new pet can be an essential part of recovery, I don’t think I’m ready yet. Bella’s death shattered me in a way I’ve never experienced, and my family had many pets: cats, dogs, horses, and other sundry creatures. Most lived to old age, but we lost more than out share to cars, gunshots, and disease. Some simply vanished. I was closer to some than others, but until Bitsy, whom we raised from a kitten after he was severely burned in a barn fire, none really hit me hard.…

A decade ago, I began a lengthy reflection on a deeply moving event that affected me when I was an undergraduate in the 1980s. The act of writing if often therapeutic for me, and the massive website that resulted from that project not only gave focus to thoughts and emotions that had haunted me for a quarter of a century, but also gave me focus in the shadow of the loss of another pet: Angel, our fifteen-year-old calico, who died on October 17, 2013. It was with that project in mind when I started this site nearly four months ago on the day Bella died. But words gave me no…