See if you can estimate what day you took her home, and then add up how many days you were together.
* On December 23, 2010, I helped my kitty TipToe go to the Rainbow Bridge. She was also 19 years old.

It’s been 1 yr today (10/10/11) since I put my beloved 19yr old cat Samantha to sleep. Hard to believe it’s been one year. I know I did the right thing, as in the final weeks, I finally knew she was really suffering, as she primarily used the carpet as her litter box, sleep more than normal, didn’t jump into bed anymore + actually let me hold her and would fall asleep in my arms.

My college friend/roommate Yogi got her from the pound back in 1991. Eventually, Samantha found her way to living w/me in Minnesota, after I came home to Ohio in 1994 for a visit. So, I had her for most of her life.

This is the memorial scrapbook dvd that I created for Samantha:
PET MEMORIAL Scrapbook Dvd:Tribute to 19yr old cat Samantha~Man’s Best Friend by Jonanthan Cain via YoutTube (http://youtu.be/rmR-8_dF41w)

Spiker will wait for you at the fabled Ranbow Bridge, you will see her again. In the meanwhile, you are holding her in your heart, shedding a tear for her once in a while, but mostly smiling on her, remembering the joy she brought you and your boys.

I like your motto and I agree completely – life IS better with a dog! Give kisses to Bella from me!

Both my 13 and 15 year old huskies passed away within the last 3 months. They were like my kids and the loss has been near debilitating at times. A dear friend recommended this book and I’ll admit I hesitated reading it at first. I was scared of the feelings it might bring back, bargaining with myself whether I really needed it or not; I tried to rationalize my way out of it every way imaginable. I’m now kicking myself for not reading it sooner.

I figured I would highlight the elements I found particularly helpful: The way the book was formatted, one page of content per one page of journaling, kept me engaged. This interactive format made me ‘invest’ into my grief work than if it was all content. Of course there were questions that I definitely avoided answering and told myself, ‘That’s enough for tonight, I’ll do it later’ but those turned out to be the most helpful.

The author addresses many different loss scenarios that I thought wouldn’t be relevant to me but reading about them opened my eyes to how it ‘could have been’. It gave me a new perspective on my losses and helped me see the positive elements in each scenario.
A sliding scale at the end of certain sections encouraged me to ‘check-in’ with myself and my feelings at the present moment. It wasn’t always on the positive side of the scale for me, but bit by bit it gradually moved in the right direction.

I started the book feeling 100% sad 100% of the time as my beginning ‘check-in’ suggested. The fact that I am actually able to remember happy times with my babies and smile speaks volumes of the progress I made with the help of the workbook. Maybe that would have happened eventually without the book, but the content and the work helped me get there in a positive, constructive way. It helped me think about each factor of their lives, when all I was able to think about was their passing. It helped me find, cherish and embrace the beauty in everything we shared, and still share.

I am so so very fortunate that my friend recommended this book to me. I hope you find this book as helpful as I did. Lord knows we can use the help right now.

I promise, my book will help you! I wasn’t sure of this when I first released it for publication. I was exhausted from going over the details over and over to try to get it just right. The right words, in the right order. I felt I could keep doing that forever and never get it right. But the people who are writing to me about my book have given me confidence that it really will help and all my work on the details actually resulted in a little book that will give a lot of people a great deal of help.