Little did I know when I received a copy of The Pet Loss Guide by Millie Jacobs, which features as this week’s Book on the Bird Table, that I would be writing a review following the loss of our beloved cat Sparky, who was hit and killed by a car two days ago on the road outside our home.
The book therefore has provided some much needed comfort to our family after such a sudden death.
The author uses her own personal experience of pet loss and her background as a grief counsellor to help readers navigate the process of mourning the loss of a much-loved pet, when the emotional support people need after losing close animal companions can often be overlooked.
As well as chapters detailing the process of grief, how to help people through this, and the value grief can bring to our lives, the book features fond stories from contributors remembering the pets they have loved and lost, along with a 31-day series of journalling prompts to help readers work through their feelings, and quotes from famous writers.
One of the hardest parts of losing our cat was to see how profoundly it has affected our nine-year-old son who had known Sparky all his life and had developed a very special bond with him.  The chapter on ‘Helping Children Deal With Pet Loss’, therefore, has proved its worth alone.
As I recommend this book whole-heartedly to others, I will end with my own reflections on our cat Sparky, who came to us as a tw0-year-old needing re-homing and enjoyed 13 happy years as part of our family. I will remember his ability to charm anyone he met, to provide unconditional love to us, seeing us through many other losses and keeping the children company when they called him up to bed and he padded up the stairs more like a dog than a cat, how he scratched all our garden furniture to bits as soon as we bought it and how he left a trail of fluffy grey hair in his wake wherever he went, which I continue to find as I sit in the places where he would normally be found beside us. He lies under our apple tree now, where he often used to sun himself, and as I washed out his bowl for the last time, I felt his presence brush past my legs and knew he would always be with us.
As Millie Jacobs says, ‘…I built my life around that hole, a hole that can never be filled in. I think you adjust to it, as you don’t want it to disappear. Death made that hole appear, but love actually created it. It was only because you loved your pet that the hole made by their loss is so big and so deep, and so meaningful.’
In memory of Sparky, our ‘grey-suited gentleman’: July 2007 – July 2022
The Pet Loss Guide, published by Orion Spring, is available from bookshops including Amazon, Waterstones, the Book Depository and Foyles.
The Pet Loss Guide
£13.59
Discover Animals is a small team dedicated to bringing you the latest conservation and nature news. If you enjoy our content, please support our work with a donation from as little as £1.
