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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 actually like cats too.
I have experienced more painful and impactful losses in my life since the death of my cat, but for some reason the finality of finishing his clay paw print is something that I have put off for years now. With fewer distractions to keep me from my emotional to-do list these days, I decided to tackle this project.
Shockingly, the clay had stayed totally fine in its Tupperware home and the process of actually curing and painting the paw print was simple; I just baked the clay in my oven and decorated it with some paints I already had at home. When I finished painting, I felt guilty about how long it took me to take care of this seemingly simple project and had to quickly remind myself that there is no linear timeline or roadmap for dealing with grief and loss in life.
What really kept me from taking the paw print out of that container and finishing it was that I thought by finishing this project I would be putting a final seal on our time together and closing off that part of my life. Instead, I had meditative time to reflect on the years that we shared. And now I have a small reminder of him that I can put up in my home and look at every day with love and gratitude.
