When the family pet, who doesn’t leap anymore, whose broken teeth and wobbly gait has been warning you of its inevitable decline, dies in your daughter’s arms at your neighborhood animal hospital, it’s time to write.

This isn’t the essay about how parents should use this opportunity to teach children about life and death, the reminder that “all things come to an end” or that “Jesus cares about our pets, too.” Those are sweet things to consider. It is not, however, what I’m thinking about as I wonder what to do with the sad vacancy that hovers around my house now like a shadow at different times of day. 

The essay I want to write goes two directions: one is personal and cathartic, the piece of writing that fulfills a human need to work out my emotions in a concrete form. When a sadness comes, some people go home and bake a pie, some make a photo album, others clean out the garage. For me, I write. The essay’s other direction is far more generous. It’s the piece of the essay that realizes you don’t really give a rip about my cat. You just want in on the story yourself.

With that in mind, you may want to skip this first part; it’s probably just for me. I lost two lovely dogs as a child: one feisty little terrier whose nip at my cheek left a scar I can see today if I look closely enough, and a short-haired collie who was the archetypal family pet: irreplaceable, obedient, and drop-dead gorgeous. Their deaths made a permanent mark on our family.

So when Cloud, my little gray-striped cat, showed up in the backyard ten years ago, it made me wonder if I should go at it again. But we did. He burrowed himself into our family routine like all pets do, creating vignettes and one-act plays that only a family can recite. Pets are the secret inside jokes that tighten a family’s story. Cloud was ours. 

But when he was finally diagnosed with too many things to fix, we made that merciful  appointment that feels more like betrayal. Suddenly, the world was in on our story. Every single person who learned of Cloud’s fate wanted to share his own story with me. This week I’ve learned of beautiful dogs and tiny ones, particular fur markings, the special sleeping places, the unique color of eyes, and animal anecdotes both heroic and silly. 

Cloud’s story became either a PTSD trigger, a reminder of happier days, or a spiritual opportunity. Some stores were tinged with dark humor, such as the tale of the family on vacation whose pet sitters were so panicked by the death of their furry charge that the freezer was the only option. Still more were gently nostalgic; others were downright superstitious. Even the pet shunners shared the tales of others, and no one was disrespectful. They are not being selfish in telling their own story. It’s their way of saying “I get you.” It seems that when the cat dies, everyone puts a hand on your shoulder. 

Cloud’s minor story is not fit for Newsweek and it might not even be fit for a writer who promised herself she’d never be a Cat Blogger.  Yet everyone wants in on the story. That’s the universal truth. Animals are a far safer topic than, say, your sister’s cancer or your friend’s mental illness. But they can crack open some love that might otherwise be lost, and who knows if it can lead to more? 

I know there is plenty of suffering in this world to go around, and it might be indulgent to cry past midnight. But I’m going to take what I know and use it in the kingdom of God. On Monday when my students ask me “How was your summer?” I might just tell them when my cat died. Chances are they will have a story to tell me.