I Finally Painted My Dead Cat’s Clay Paw Print
Being stuck at home is giving me time to deal with an extensive emotional to-do list
When my cat’s health started to deteriorate in 2017 I spent a somewhat irrational amount of money at the vet, trying everything that was recommended in an attempt to give myself more time with him. When he passed away and the vet gave me the option to cremate him, I did. Later, when I came to pick up the tiny urn, the vet’s office also gave me a clay paw print with his name stamped on it. At the time, I wasn’t ready to deal with the loss and put the paw print in a Tupperware and stuffed it away in a drawer, thinking I would finish it later.
I found my cat by the side of the road in rural Vermont and took him in, naming him Kaldren, a loose phonetic spelling of “lucky one” in Tibetan. We tried and failed to find his original family and he quickly became a fixture of our family and my life, moving with us from Vermont to Arizona and then moving to Chicago with me during my last year of college. Kaldren was a vicious, playful, tiny kitten who aged into a giant, calm, sweet-tempered cat, convincing plenty of “dog people” that they might…
