Coping with Pet Grief: How Love Transcends the Boundaries of Time, Space and Yes, Species...
- Ka Yee Meck
- Mar 16
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 26
Today marks the 25th "birthday" of our furbaby Go Mau, to which this blog post is dedicated. This blog post has absolutely nothing to do with my usual “niche” of multilingual parenting, but I felt compelled to write it anyway for a couple of reasons…
First, I felt very strongly about the need to honour the memory of our late furbaby, Go Mau, on her 25th “birthday.” Second, I wanted to write this piece to reach out to anyone going through pet grief right now, in the hope of offering some solace and comfort to whoever happens to stumble upon this post.
So, on 16th March 2000—exactly a quarter of a century ago, which might as well be a lifetime ago, as I was still a thirteen-year-old girl living in Hong Kong, not much older than my son is now—our life changed forever when a little stray kitten we named 雪糕 (Cantonese for “ice cream”!), aka 糕貓 (pronounced “Go Mau”), entered our home.
My sister and I will forever remember this day like it was yesterday. We were at home just pottering around after school when our landline phone rang (yes, we didn’t have mobile phones back then!)—it was our mum, who was on her way home, calling to announce an unexpected piece of news: she was going to bring a kitten home!
Apparently, she was walking along a busy street in our inner-city area of Wanchai when she found herself being followed by a stray kitten who wouldn’t stop meowing at her, circling around her legs.
The kitten had clearly chosen her.
And my mum decided, impulsively, to take the kitten home.
My sister and I were overjoyed—my sister named her 雪糕 before even setting eyes on her!
And over the next 14 years, 雪糕 would become a member of our family, even moving from Hong Kong to the UK with us in 2003. She was our furbaby, a constant companion for me and my sister through the turbulence of adolescence and moving schools and countries. We loved her so very much—just as much as we would love a real human child. In September 2014, she passed away after battling kidney disease for months…
I can honestly say that I experienced the most heart-wrenching grief when we said goodbye to 糕貓, our dearest furbaby. To anyone who’s going through pet loss right now, I want you to know that you’re not alone—pet grief is not something universally acknowledged by society, but it is REAL. And let’s remember that the depth of the grief we feel is a testament to the strength of the love we felt for our furry companion—love and grief are truly two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other.
Half a year after we bid farewell to 雪糕, we welcomed Milly, our new furbaby, into our life. While she’s not a replacement for 雪糕, we’re just so immensely grateful to have Milly in our life—a companion for all of us, including the children, who will forever remember Milly as their childhood pet…
The unexpected and wonderful ripple effect of an act of kindness
Two years ago, my sister met her future fiancé at a friends’ gathering. They were about to go their separate ways after the party, but something caught my sister’s fiancé’s eye: the picture of 雪糕 on my sister’s phone screen. It sparked a conversation (turns out he’s a big cat lover!) that led to the blossoming of a relationship…
Isn’t this almost too beautiful to be true?
Except that it is true.
To me, this serendipitous event beautifully encapsulates how a random, impulsive act of kindness—my mum deciding to rescue a stray kitten at the dawn of the new century—had reverberations over two decades later, weaving a thread that bound two people together, changing their life trajectories forever.
Earlier this year, I read an extremely thought-provoking book called Fluke by Brian Klaas. One line from the book has forever altered the way I view the world: “We control nothing, but we influence everything.” The ripple effect my mum’s action had twenty-odd years later—which no one, absolutely no one, could have foreseen—is, to my mind, the perfect illustration of Klaas’ powerful idea.
When we act out of love, the ripple effects can spread through the ages into infinity in ways we cannot possibly imagine today.
How love (and grief) transcends boundaries of time, space, and species
I made a photo album commemorating 雪糕 after she passed away in 2014. This book lies on the mantelpiece of our living room, taking pride of place.
My children have always known about 雪糕, or “Go Mau,” as we usually refer to her.
Still, I was taken by surprise when one Sunday morning, I found my six-year-old daughter, still in her pyjamas, quietly leafing through that album on the couch, looking thoughtful and introspective. When she finally noticed my presence, she looked up quietly and said to me (in Chinese) with tears in her eyes, “Mama, I love Go Mau so much.”
In that moment, my heart brimmed with so many emotions, but most of all, love—love for my daughter, who, in her childhood innocence, found an emotional connection to a creature she’d never seen in real life; love for Go Mau, who will live forever in our hearts and our minds for as long as we live; love for my parents, my sister, and my husband, who all shared this deep love for Go Mau.
What’s more, I felt an unspeakable… joy? Awe? At the fact that love—and, on the flip side, grief as well—can transcend the boundaries of time, space, and species. It is possible to love and grieve for people or even non-human creatures we’ve never met in the flesh before. That emotional bond can live on and transcend boundaries through images and stories, passing from generation to generation.
Final thoughts...
So, on this day, as I reflect on the 25th anniversary of Go Mau entering our life on the other side of the world, I’d like to shout out to all fur parents out there and, indeed, anyone reading this post: be loving, be kind—your acts of love and kindness will reverberate through time and space in mysterious ways stretching far, far into the future.
And to anyone grieving a loss for a loved one, whether it’s a pet or some other person or creature: You are not alone, and your grief is a beautiful reflection of the depth of the love you once had and will always have for the being you’re grieving for now.
To our dearest 雪糕: We miss you, we love you, and we’ll always be thinking of you, now and forever…
xxx
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