From the introduction:
My very earliest memory is an isolated, vague impression of sitting on a small concrete step against a red brick wall and patting an obliging black cat. I mentioned this to my mother many years later during a discussion of the pets we’d had in our family, as she’d just insisted that she was never partial to cats.
“Oh,” she’d replied, “that wasn’t our cat, it was one of the neighbors’. That black cat was always coming around and sitting in the sun on our porch.” Then she looked at me more narrowly. “But you were only two when we moved from that rented red brick unit into our own house. How can you remember that cat?”
Such is the profound effect of the animals that we allow into our lives; into our personal space, into our emotions and, yes, even into our very earliest memories. These are our pets, and most households in the West include furry four-footed members. Children, unless they have been conditioned by an earlier negative experience, or by overwary parental warnings, are naturally attracted by and respond to the overtures of a friendly dog or cat, and are happy to lavish their affection on them by the hour. I’m sure that was me as a two-year-old.
The irony is that while it’s conclusive that pet ownership normally bolsters the mental health and resilience of all ages, providing enormous character benefits such as compassion and responsibility, the inevitable or tragic death of a much-loved pet companion can, for some folk, bring a degree of grief that causes a journey of mental struggle.
This book is designed to give you some of the answers you need, some comfort and some tools to get through the first dark days of saying ‘Goodbye’. As you read, it will come alongside and walk with you, or help you walk with someone you know, who is going through this unique type of pain. And when you reach the end of this book, it is our prayer that you will be able to add a heartfelt whisper to your departed pet – ‘and thank you’.
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Sable Corven hears everything. Every lie. Every secret. Every heartbeat through a wall. Classified as Minor Talent in a kingdom that ranks its mages like weapons, she has spent years being underestimated.
