I have a gorgeous longhaired black feline friend that is now over eight years old, however, when Midnite was only three, I most assuredly thought he was going to die of a broken heart.

I adopted Midnite and Skittles, a Siamese, only two weeks apart from each other when both were only six weeks old. They preferred to spend most of their time outdoors and were soon inseparable. Midnite was the sidekick -- Skittles was the obvious leader. I rarely observed one without the other.

Three years later, when Skittles had an unfortunate accident involving a car and was put to sleep, Midnite was inconsolable.

Having relied on Skittles as his sole source of friendship and comfort, he wailed outside my window night after night. When I would coax him inside, he would tear the curtains down trying to get back outside.

I began to work with Midnite every night as that was the only time he would grace me with his presence. Every evening I would sit on my porch and call him. Eventually, he would reveal himself out of the darkness, allowing me to pet him. When I attempted to pick him up to take him inside, he would scramble out of my arms, leaving me with long scratches, night after night.

After a few weeks, he began to sit in my lap, purring contentedly, but still he would cry outside my window every night. Finally, the night came when I brought him into the house again. He was still uneasy, but he spent over an hour inside without tearing up the curtains before he pitifully meowed to go outside. Then began a nightly ritual of him coming in after dark, for a short visit -- visits that began to get longer in duration.

A couple of years later Midnite had begun to occasionally spend entire nights inside but many times would wake me around 3:00AM crying to return to his comfort zone. I would sleepily oblige and stumble back to my bed. Around that time, I moved across the country to a very cold region, upstate New York, and on our first cold winter night with over a foot of snow on the ground, Midnite learned the value of a warm, cozy fireplace inside.

From that day forward, he has been the epitome of a purring, loving, lazy indoors feline living in the lap of luxury but it was a very long and tedious process, requiring an immeasurable amount of loving patience.

When grieving over the loss of a loved one or a loved pet, try to remember that the animals in your life grieve as well. While helping your pet through a loss, you may find that it helps to dissipate your pain as well, mainly because you are doing what their deceased master or friend would have done themselves -- consoling their furry friend in their loving memory.

Copyright © Lynelle M. Dawson, 2000