🪞🕯️bug reflections #3 🐈⬛🪽
a 1 year anniversary post to honour my beloved cat Chicken <3
TW// grief, animal death
One year ago today I looked out of my window in Thailand and found my beautiful sweet cat had passed away. Grief is one of the most painful experiences for humans to have, and I’m privileged enough to say that this was my first big taste of it. I also know from research that autistic people struggle with grief even harder, so maybe thats why this loss felt like the most intense and earth shattering thing to have ever happened to me. I remember feeling like my reality had split in two, there was a world where Chicken was alive and a world where she was gone and somehow I had teleported to the latter. As my brain desperately tried to make sense of the situation and ground me in my new reality, I was smacked in the face again and again with the heartbreak.
Chicken was just a cat, but after bringing her into my home, she soon became my whole world. I was a chronically ill person living alone in a foreign continent, it was incredibly isolating. Weeks would go by where I wouldn’t leave my house, but I had Chicken. I wasn’t alone when she’d wake me up in the morning and I wasn’t alone when she’d snuggle next to me at night. I’d pull my bike up to the house and she would come running to greet me, the tiniest meows and the biggest zoomies. We understood each other. We really spoke to each other. I felt seen and loved and ultimately so much joy. This tiny being made me laugh without fail every single day. Creating endless havoc bringing various frogs, lizards and beetles into the house for me, grooming and cleaning me whenever she had the chance, we looked after each other.
My friend Juicy rescued her and brought her home for me to care for. The greatest gift I’ve ever received. She was abandoned by her family as a tiny kitten, and was all alone when Juicy found her. We became each other’s family. I’m so grateful to have been a part of her little time on earth, without her I might have not figured out how to be alone. One thing about me is that I struggle being around people for long periods of time, my system just doesn’t have the capacity for it. Chicken allowed me to finally be able to live by myself without being lonely, and when she was gone I gradually learned how to just be with me.
The day she died was the day I decided to leave Thailand. It hadn’t been serving me for a long time, and this was the final push I needed to make a change. The weeks that followed HURT. I remember wondering if I would feel like this forever, I couldn’t imagine the pain ever lessening. But it did. And then the pain shifted from her loss, to feeling like she was slipping away. Memories fading and blurring as my new reality started to settle in. I would cry at the feeling of forgetting her, at the guilt of letting her go and not bringing her back home to England with me. And now a year later, when I look back at old photos, I cry for myself. I cry at the memory of looking down and seeing her so still, the most still she had ever been, and feeling my whole body rip to shreds. That day I cried and screamed so loudly my neighbour heard me two fields over. A completely surreal moment, I felt like I was above myself looking down and thinking that I’d never heard anyone make these noises outside of a TV screen. I wish that trauma didn’t overshadow all the moments of bliss I had with her, but it brings me a strange comfort and closeness to her to still be able to feel anything at all. I’ll cry for my trauma and keep hold of that pain if it means I can still feel her with me.
I debated a lot on whether I should share this post, it feels so small in the grand scheme of things, but it was such an integral moment in my life I feel like I should honour it as such. And honour her. So here are a few more photos of our brief but sacred time together…
If you read this far, thank you. I wish that everyone could have met Chicken, she was so adored by those that had the chance. Such a funny and loving strange little thing, I hope never to forget her.
I’ve been meaning to write more substacks, but I’ve been feeling weird about being online… so I’m glad this one came to fruition.
I’ll be back soon.
big luv for now,
ladybug <3
ps…
This is a poem I wrote about a month after her death. I never knew what to do with it, so I’m just going to leave it here to rest.
xox
Chicken wasn’t just a cat. She was your lifeline. And you were hers. This was heartbreaking to read but so tender and so true
Ohhh grief is so hard but this is so well written. Wish I could give you a squeeze.