Some of this post is duplicated from a post at my Morrigan McBride Substack, but it’s been almost a month since I posted that, and I have a few more thoughts as time goes on.
On December 18, 2025, I had to say goodbye to my soul cat, Eustace Clarence Scrubb. I don’t exaggerate when I say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the worst day of my forty-nine years of life.
Yes, I’ve had goodbyes in the past. None of my grandparents are still living, and I have lost friends, in high school to a car accident, to a dorm shooting while I was a student at Purdue, and in the years since.
I’m not a parent and have never wanted to be one, so I fully admit I’m one of those people who claims her cats as her children. I’ve said goodbye to cats before, too. In 2011 I lost my 18-year-old cat Merlin to kidney failure; I’d had him since I was 16, so over half my life.
It’s always hard. But Eustace was my soul cat. My familiar, if you will. He was the one who always wanted to be where I was, the most tolerant, amiable, thoughtful, loving cat I’ve ever met.
My other two cats, Eowyn and Strider, have both been adjusting to losing Eustace, as well as trying to help me deal with my own grief. Eowyn and Eustace never got along, yet you could often find them sharing the bed, sleeping at opposite ends. Strider and Eustace were playmates who occasionally slapped each other.
We’re all adjusting, but it’s slow.
I had a good day on Boxing Day. I went hiking with friends, saw some great birds, got a lot done, and just generally enjoyed my day…
…only to go to bed and have no Eustace there to curl up against my hip. He was a solid 13 pounds, always a comforting and reassuring pressure against my hip or the small of my back, and he loved to lie on my chest first thing in the mornings.
When Merlin died of kidney failure, I had had some time to prepare for it. I’ve decided that is infinitely to be preferred than noticing on Tuesday that something’s wrong, visit the vet on Wednesday, visit another vet on Thursday, and say goodbye after a traumatic cardiac arrest event.
I’m still sad. Bedtime is hard for me, because it’s associated with Eustace. Strider has started sleeping with me, which I appreciate, but he’s a restless companion compared to Eustace, and as much as I love him, he’s not Eustace.
In the meantime, Eowyn is in the early stages of kidney failure at almost fifteen, and I know I have another goodbye to prepare for.
Mary Oliver’s poetry is often a balm to me, or at least a bittersweet expression of truth. In the end, her poem “In Blackwater Woods” has become almost a mantra to me as I learn to move forward with this grief of missing Eustace.
In Blackwater woods
Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
