Dead Pets: A Podcast About Pet Grief
A podcast about pet grief that celebrates the lives of the creatures who have changed ours.
Each episode, you’ll hear from guests about a pet from their past. We’ll talk about why we loved them, why it hurts so bad when they’re gone, how they changed us, how we carry them with us, and all of the joy and meaning they brought with them in their short lives.
petgrief, petstories, pet loss
Dead Pets: A Podcast About Pet Grief
Goose | Dead Pets
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Dead Pets is a podcast about pet grief that celebrates the lives of the creatures that have changed ours.
TW: This episode briefly discusses major depression and suicide.
Sign up for the newsletter at https://www.deadpetspodcast.com/.
Follow us on TikTok @deadpetspodcast.
For more information, visit www.deadpetspodcast.com.
Do you have a dead pet you'd like to share? Email deadpetsofficial@gmail.com.
Follow us on social media: https://www.tiktok.com/@deadpetspodcast
pet grief, pet stories, pet loss
For more information www.deadpetspodcast.com.
Do you have a dead pet you'd like to share? Email deadpetsofficial@gmail.com.
Follow us on social media: https://www.tiktok.com/@deadpetspodcast
pet grief, pet stories, pet loss
Welcome to Dead Pets, the podcast about pet grief that celebrates the lives of the creatures who have changed ours. To everyone who has been listening and sharing Dead Pets with your friends, thank you so so much. We are growing, and it's really exciting for me to see this project that is so, so special to me is resonating with other people in the way that I hoped it would. We have a brand new website up www.deadpetspodcast.com. It's looking really good. And there you can find our episode archives, more information about the podcast, and you can sign up for the upcoming Dead Pets newsletter, which is a place where I will be sharing thoughts and reflections and revelations from all the conversations I get to have with people about their beloved pets, about their lives, and about their deaths. I will also be sharing my own grief journey, mourning the loss of my 19-year-old cat Dodge, who died a month ago. If you sign up for the Dead Pets newsletter, you'll get access to all of this. You will also get 30% off Dead Pets merch, which will be coming later this year. If you haven't already, don't forget to follow Dead Pets on TikTok. There you can find videos of some of the pets that we have featured and working on other content like ways that you can memorialize your pet, information on the stages of grief, and reviews on books about pet grief. I connected with today's guest on the Senior Cat subreddit. If you have a cat that is old as hell, that you love more than life itself, those are your people, and I encourage you to join it. It's a wonderful community. On today's episode, Wayne tells us about a very good girl named Goose.
SPEAKER_00When I was really young, maybe six or seven, we moved to a new house, and it was at the edge of a farm in the you know in the exurbs, and um we had a a little farm cat that adopted me. And it was a little black cat. We named it Midnight, and for mysterious reasons, Midnight disappeared one day, and that's that's okay, that happens. But I think that made me always have a thing for black cats. I adopted goose when my ex and I were coming back from our honeymoon. We had just landed literally at the airport, and we knew we wanted to adopt a cat. I had just graduated my master's degree, and I was starting a doctorate, so we had a new home, a new marriage, every everything was new. It was just that beginning of my adult phase of my life. We stopped at the shelter on a whim on the way home from the airport, and there was a litter of three kittens, and one of them was goose. There were also two sisters, there were a couple gray tabbies along with that, but we we knew we couldn't take all three. But what drew me to Goose was she was playing with the litter in her litter box, and that plus the black kitty connection. It I don't know, I I could tell she was goofy to begin with. So we adopted Goose and one of the gray tabbies, so her and her sister. They were on a two-for-one special, which was perfect for poor grad students. And so we adopted Goose and her sister, and Goose's original name was Kiberia, and her sister's name was Julieta because I was obsessed with Fellini movies back in my 20s. They had to have pretentious names. Originally, Goose was called Kiberia, but very quickly she became Goose because she was just a silly goose. It was very clear early on she adopted me as her human and started following me around. Goose was never really cuddly, especially early on. When I quickly established a routine of going to school and coming back at the end of the day, she would wait for me every day when I'd start to come home, and she would um just come and hang out with me. She was never really a lap cat in her early years, but she just kind of hung out with me. And other than just following me around, that she was my literally my little black shadow. I was the one that she just wanted to play with me. We did all the normal little kitten games, little strings and things, and she used to fetch toys back in the day, so I was the guy throwing the uh little soccer balls for her to catch, and she'd bring them upstairs and I'd throw them back down, and and just we we just developed a really quick relationship very early on. So I started a doctorate in music. It was just the path that I was on. But very early on in the doctorate, I realized that it wasn't for me. And you know, it's it's one of those things you're on a path of just perpetual motion. And so that all happened in Goose's first year, new marriage, new new degree, and I was set on a path for academia, but I had this giant existential crisis. I didn't know what to do with my life, and I had never worked a day job, I'd always just gone to school and worked odd jobs, and so that was the next phase was the existential crisis of having to find a way to pay rent that wasn't a graduate assistant salary. Goose was there through all of that. You know, there were some low points and some high points, but it had been, you know, many years since I had pets in the house, and I knew that was something I always wanted. But that was another thing that happened really early on was that I began working my first ever day job later than some people did because I, you know, I went to grad school. Just caring for a living creature was it was an it was just like another one of those things, like, you know, beginnings points of adulthood. It's like, oh my gosh, I'm the one that has to do all the things, make sure there's food and you know the litter is clean, taking care of the cats. But just the whole routine of having that living creature, and let me tell you, Goose was wonderful, but she was also a pain in the ass. And the the best cats are, and you know, she she was a high maintenance kitty. She had very strong strong emotions, if you can put emotions on an animal, right? She could be grouchy, she could be mean, but she could also love really hard. She could be difficult. So when she was sweet, it was like, hey, great. It was very early on that that it was clear we had a handful. The first thing that happened was we were renovating the house and peeling old wallpaper off, and we noticed that goose had been eating the wallpaper. That was the first emergency room visit because after we discovered she was eating the wallpaper, she got very lethargic, but seemed to be deathly ill. You know, she kind of collapsed onto one of my shoes and was drooling uncontrollably. That was the first trip to the ER, and we lived about 45 minutes away from an ER. As soon as we got there and spent the money, that's when she perked up and started feeling better, and she's like, Oh, thanks for getting me here. I'm just fine. I'm pretty sure she had feline pika because uh soon after that, the next thing she decided to eat was the box spring mattress. She ate her way through the bottom of the box spring because it's very thin, and then crawled up around in there. Well, it's hard to fall asleep with a cat crawling around inside your mattress. My first solution was to put layers of foam board between the frame and the mattress, which she promptly ate through all the foam board. Thankfully, we didn't end up in the ER because of that. It was clear she liked to eat funny things. She would try to eat metal utensils, even though she didn't get very far there. That was another thing that changed in my life was having a pet and having to deal with all the things. The other thing that she did for years around that time, she developed a habit of launching at the bedroom door because after she ate through the box spring and the foam board that I put up, we decided that was the time maybe we shouldn't have the cat sleeping in the bedroom. And the only solution was to close the door. Well, Goose wanted to hang out with me. She didn't seem to ever sleep if I was wanting to sleep, and she began launching at the doorknob and pulling up carpet. So we were constantly trying to fix the carpet. She would launch at the door so much there would be grooves, kind of Garfield-esque, you know, like hanging down the door in whatever bedroom we had. Then she'd settle down and she'd snuggle up next to me and be like, hey dad, everything's cool. I need belly rubs now. She used her nine lives to the fullest. I did lose track, but I think we had about nine or so ER visits. This cat, man, I gotta tell you, was resilient. In my mind, she had a very vivid imagination. She must have. She did play with me, but she would just play on her own. I mean, she would she get the zoomies, I'd leave the room, I'd go to the basement, and I would hear her go tearing through the house, carrying whatever toy she had, and she would howl and howl. And at first I was concerned, and I'm like, oh no, another ER visit. But then I quickly learned that that was just her secret, secret noise that she made, that she was so happy when she thought nobody else was around. And she was she so I don't know what happened when nobody was home, but for sure she was running around, carrying toys around, howling. This quickly developed early on, too, was it was very clear that Goose was a picky eater. Good for her, knowing what she wanted, but that also was not good for being a poor grad student and somebody with an entry-level job. Really, really by the end, 21 years on, I mean, I had a I had a $100 a month food budget. We would go through sometimes four or five, six cans of food a day, just trying to guess what she wanted. It progressed over time, but it would change week to week, and sometimes day to day. As soon as I would buy a case of a food that I thought was popular, she would start rejecting it. And when she would start rejecting food, that's when she would bite my toes. So we'd go from loving belly rubs one minute to, hey, I'm hungry and I don't like any of the food in the house. It's time to go get some new food. It was so funny because I lived several different places throughout her 21 and a half years. And one of her idiosyncrasies was she never had one set routine. She'd always be finding a new routine almost every few months. I'd never know what I was gonna get. Most cats I've had pretty much have their set routines, but with her, it was almost on a cycle, sometimes a couple years without sitting on my lap, and then she would sit on my lap for three years straight. But it would have to be in a certain position. She was so particular, just like she was particular about food, she was particular about how the lap sitting was gonna go, and I had to have I had to be in a certain position, or that was it. Some of the best days with Goose were when she did begin to settle down. I mean, she lived the lifetime of two cats. There were some rough years, especially when I changed jobs and I was working at opening shift at like Starbucks. Any change like that would throw off the already tentative routine. When she did start to settle down towards being about 10, that's really when she she did start to become not necessarily a lap cat all the time, but she always wanted to be next to me. I always read before I fall asleep, so she would come up and lay next to me. But of course, I couldn't just read. I had to read with the book in one hand and do a belly rub in the other, and if I ever stopped rubbing her belly, I'd get bitten. It wasn't drawing blood, but it was just a reminder we need the belly rubs. It would be the same too, you know, chilling on the couch, she'd come and snuggle up next to me and want the belly rub. Before I got divorced, too, my my ex-wife and I would kind of joke that Goose really wanted to be my wife. We did go back and forth with trying to open the bedroom door again and let the cat sleep with us to decrease the launching at the door because it was getting kind of expensive to replace carpet and doors. When we experimented with opening the door again, Goose would come in. I think she was an excellent judge of character, and she would try to kick my wife out. And so she could snuggle next to me. She would do her goose thing and be mean, and she'd be happy as long as she was snuggled up next to me, and she was the only other one in the vet. My ex and I were both chasing a doctorate and both chasing higher ed and university jobs for a long time. And so that involved moving to whatever school you got accepted to or got an assistantship at and funding. It involved several moves and an existential crisis, as I mentioned before, and then there were a lot of moves in there. She always loved exploring whatever new space there was to explore. She loved packing. She would get in the middle of whatever you were packing, whether it was for just a short trip or vacation or any one of these several moves we did. And my ex and I did buy a house. We settled in, but it was clear maybe we were going each our different ways. You start to question like, what is is it just me? Is it is it my partner? As my ex and I were growing apart, goose was the constant. There was that happening. But also, Goose's sister got really sick. And so that was uh it was rough. She was about 12, she lived a good cat life. We went from healthy to cleaning up messes all the time. It was tough. In true Goose fashion, we got a set of pet stairs for the bed for her her sister who was sick. The sister never used those stairs, but Goose every night would be like, Oh, you guys, thanks for getting the pet stairs. Fantastic. Or we had a mirror, and I'd watch her like come up, like, oh yeah, this is cool, so cool. And so that was great for Goose. You know, when Goose's sister was time and she passed, and this is both wonderful and awful. Goose thought it was the best thing ever because I think that it was clear she wanted to be the only pet in the house. She had probably three or four of the best months of her life. That was great for me and her, but my ex was lonely and wanted two more cats. We made a decision to adopt a couple tiny kittens so that everybody in the house could have a pet. Goose didn't handle that too well. It just brought up some of the tensions that we were already having as a couple, but the house kind of divided into sides. In retrospect, it's kind of hilarious. Goose started using peeing as a weapon, as one does, and she would start to defend her territory, and that's how she would mark the litter box. It began another cycle of, well, we maybe stopped launching at the door, but now dad had a lot of messes to clean up, right? We tried to make it work as people do. May X and I parted ways, and I found a bachelor pad. Goose had the best three years of her life. She had a renewed energy when we moved into our little pad together. When I negotiated for this sublet, I told the landlord, you know, I've got this 16-year-old cat. They kind of laughed and they're like, Oh, well, we can waive the pet rent. And I'm like, Oh, okay, because they didn't think she was gonna make it much longer. I'm like, the joke's on you guys, because you don't know this cat. That was right around the time she was having some sort of stomach issue, and I thought, well, this it's pretty rough. So I took her to the ER again. At the check-in, the tech said, Do you even want to see the vet, or do you just want to put her to sleep? I was like, I just couldn't, I was blown away. And I was like, you don't know what this cat's lived through. At this point, I was like, ER, visit at least number six, and I was like, Yeah, I want to see the vet. In true fashion, she perked up as soon as we got in there, and she was just fine. She was resilient. We both got settled in. COVID hit. It was tough. I'm in academic advising at a university, and you know, grabbed all the student files, brought everything home, emergency, and everything was piled up around me. Goose was right in the thick of it, helping me with work. We were together all the time, unless I was doing a grocery run. It was her best life. It was her dream at 16, 17. It gave her a renewed energy. I was like, okay, buddy, well, here we go. I'd throw little phone soccer balls from one room to another. She'd go tearing through the apartment like she was a kitten. We played laser dot game, and you know, and and she just became very kitten-like again at 16 or 17. It was incredible. When I got the bachelor pad, she decided she was gonna sleep on my butt because I was a stomach sleeper, and yeah, it was just like, oh hey dad, I'm gonna sleep on your butt. And I'm like, you know what? If that's what you want to do, buddy, we're that's what we're gonna do. It was hilarious. She was always, always finding weird stuff like that. And you know, I just I just remembered another time where like somewhere in the middle, who knows what what year, eight, nine, ten, somewhere, I had one of those little cat cubes that you know, the little expandable cat cubes just on a whim. I put the cat cube on my stomach when I was laying on my back, and she crawled into the cube for like weeks. She decided that was her new routine, you know, and it was like so I'd have but I'd have to put the cat cube on my on my belly for to be crawling, or she wouldn't do it. And then, you know, she'd wake up and then she'd go zoom through the house, and she would I had these like almost floor-to-ceiling windows, it was a great place, and then she'd one run from one end of the window ledge to the other and back and forth with the zoomies, and I'm like, I think that was the point where I was like, She is not from this planet, and she would just like scratch the windows and howl, and she was having the best time. And that's I I think it was yeah, it was around that time when I was like, when she does this, she's getting messages from her home planet, like Nibbler on Futurama. Who knows what she was saying to me when she was talking to me, but she was from a different planet. Of course, then one night, it's almost bedtime, and I'm watching TV, and Goose is sitting next to me. All of a sudden, my leg was wet, and I was like, Oh, I spilled my drink, and no, Goose had some sort of bladder issue. I started freaking out because I I knew that that was bad for cats. Then I started noticing she couldn't get subtle, and it was hard for me to catch her. I started noticing blood. I was like, oh boy. It was the early weeks of COVID lockdown, and I didn't have a vet in my area or anything, and so I had to go through the whole cycle of panic. I found a vet pretty near me, but it really sucked because we had to sit in the car. The vet was overrun, and we had to sit in the car for a good four hours until about two or three in the morning, but it was rough. I had to go back and sit out in the car for two hours. Nothing's open at two in the morning, and it's it, oh man, it was so rough, especially because we were doing so well. I was like, Goose, this is not the time to go, man. You know, we got some pills. I was like, oh sure, I'll I'll try to give Goose some pills. I'll give it the old college try. She wasn't having that. So two weeks later, we ended up at the same place. It it kind of calmed down for a little bit, but we ended up back in the ER for the same reason. I texted one of my friends who foster cats, and she suggested this injection, and I'm like, that's what we need. We need that injection. And so I suggested that to the vet, and they gave it to her, and back to normal. Back to being kitten-like, all good. We eventually kind of came out of COVID. I started dating again, which was also weird in COVID. I met my current wife who had a dog. She adopted a little kitten, Percy, while we were dating. Eventually we moved in together. In no place of my mind did I think Goose was gonna make it. Then we had the challenge of boy, we've got to find a place that can house all these pets, and Goose is gonna have to learn to live with a dog, which she'd never learned to live with. That was its own super fun challenge. It was great because I, you know, I'm putting down four, five, and six cans of food a day trying to get her to eat. And at the same time, George, our dog, would come in and be like, Oh, you guys are awesome. That began another cycle of, oh my gosh, I love this cat so much, but she's such a pain in the ass, right? And I I think so many of us have experienced this. My routine and everything became all about goose. And she was, you know, 18, 18, 19 at that point. I kept thinking every time she's not gonna make it much longer, but she would always bounce back from whatever it was. You know, she was doing fine and and her quality of life was good. She was just kind of a pain. But that was right around the time, too. It was it was very clear her hearing and her sight was kind of going. She knew my routine, so she kind of knew where in the house to go. But you'd come up and you'd kind of startle her, and she'd go, Oh, oh my oh my gosh. Around that time, too, she became even more talkative. She was always a talkative cat, howling and you know, playing on her own and zooming around the house. But, you know, I just started talking to her and she talked back. One of my friends said, It sounds like her meow box is broken. She was so old she couldn't meow anymore. So it was just kind of come out like a gravelly, scratchy. But boy, if I talked to her, she'd talk back to me. But the daily routines were rough, trying to get her fed, get everybody to work, make sure the dog didn't eat her food. We'd have to put out a lot of water just to make sure the dog didn't drink her water. And we had the other cat too, who also had a different food. We didn't want to get him on wet food. We had three different eating routines, water everywhere. The litter box situation started to become a problem too, because we had to have a litter box in the master bedroom suite. That meant we couldn't keep the door closed. She wouldn't go downstairs to use the litter. That's around the time where she also wouldn't let me sleep. Sleep deprivation for me became a definite issue to the point where I had to start sleeping in a guest bedroom. It's one of those terrible thoughts that I was having in the moment, but I was like, this is affecting my quality of life. And I've heard so many stories like this too, where you're just like, oh my God, I love this pet so much, but I don't know how much more I can take. It's a terrible thought that crosses your mind. You know, when it does start to become that just stress, and it's like, dude, I gotta sleep at some point. Even then, you know, I'd have to go downstairs and sleep in the guest room just to get a few hours of sleep. Every morning when I woke up, she was standing with her nose to the door. It was incredible. She would go downstairs to see me when I woke up, but she would not use the litter box. It's like goose, you know, really? And that was such a goose thing to do. And we'd have our morning conversation when I'd get ready for work. She'd do her gravelly thing at me. And she'd wait for me at the top of the stairs every day. We were doing good, and and then she had another UTI type incident. That was the running joke for me at that point, too. It was like that goose-like for me to spend money on her every once in a while. And it was like, if if it had been a year or two and we hadn't had an ER visit, she just wanted to make sure I knew how important she was. At that point, it was starting to become routine. We have one of these ER visits. Again, it was a UTI, and I ended up at a really good ER, and they were very kind. They were astonished because I didn't remember going to them, you know, almost 15 years or whatever previous, but they were like, is the is her age right? And I'm like, yeah, that's it's accurate. 2003. And they couldn't believe it. I did decide to go ahead and get all the blood work and tests and all of that done. I was like, well, at this point, you know, quality of life was really good still, other than her being a pain in my butt. Her tests came back good. Like, they were like, she's incredible for, you know, whatever it was, 1819 at that point, probably 19. They didn't find any of the things I expected. She was such a trooper and such a survivor. She started eating ice cream, and I'm like, you know what, dude, go for it. So it became a routine, and you know, I'd let her lick a little bit off the spoon. We wouldn't go crazy, but right, that's when she became the ice cream addict. You know, I'd be like holding the ice cream way up in the air to keep her away from it. So it was it was pretty funny. She'd always come in with her little nose and you know, get the ice cream, and she had lost a fang at some point. I don't even remember, but you know, I I found a fang and I freaked out, but that just became another perfect part of her personality that she had she was missing a fang. So it was pretty funny seeing a little face come in for the ice cream. Time would pass so quickly, and I was just sinking everything I had into my career. I had put my career aside for so many years, and I was like, well, this is the moment. Time was moving so quickly, and I have a new wife, things were going good, but cats are so good at hiding how they're doing. Trips to the ER were starting to become more frequent, and I didn't realize it at the time. I was sad to encounter so many not great staff at ERs, and I know they're stressed, but you know, one of them was like, he wants, you know, yeah, I could hear him whispering, he wants to see the vet. He doesn't want to just put her to sleep, but I'm like, you guys don't know. You don't know. And so, you know, that they gave her another one of those injections, and she bounced back again for almost another year after that. We got to 21, and I was like, oh, you know, she can she can drink now, but she can go have a bar with me. This is great. And so I made a collage of every every year of her life, I found a picture because I was I couldn't believe it. You know, like this is crazy. At that point, I I kind of started to think like nothing could get her down, but she started to slow down a little bit for towards Thanksgiving, Christmas, and I could tell the the end was close. Even being a picky eater, she's she stopped eating. I would try, I'd get telling her like, hey, it's time to eat, you know, like but she wasn't eating, and I I could tell she was getting more snuggly. She had gotten that way over the years, but I could tell she was on my lap anytime I sat down. She was on my lap. It was clear she has probably arthritis. It would take her forever to get settled. She always liked men more than women. She liked my male friends much more than female friends. You know, she'd come out for them and you know, rub her, rub against her shoes, whatever. She did like my wife now. When she started trying to settle my wife's lap, I knew that that was it. I got a big promotion at work. I lead a large department, it was our holiday retreat, and I was exhausted. It was a good day, but it was draining. We were getting settled after dinner, and she settled on my lap. It was normal at that point, right? But then I felt the wetness, and at that point I was like, oh, we're in trouble. So I changed my shorts, I put on new pants, and she did it again. I knew at that point that was it. I rushed her to the ER, which of course, the one that was within reasonable distance, had just changed their hours, and they're like, oh hey, we're not open on fr on Thursday or whatever, whatever anymore. You can go to our sister location, which was like an hour away. And I'm like, oh my god, you know, right? Like the this is the last thing you need. So I just talked to Goose like she's a human at that point. I was stressed to the max, and she's talking away, and so we're we're driving along a whole hour across state lines to go to the other ER. And of course, it was one that I had been to many years ago for another one of the visits back when we had our house. They took her in the back, they could tell it was just time, you know. It's so funny because I I had mentally prepared for it so many. I mean, you know, I'm laughing because it was like, especially under COVID, when she had the couple issues, I was like, dude, you have got to make it. I was like talking to her, like, you've got to make it until after this COVID thing is over, because I I I did I gotta I gotta be there when you go. And then even after that, right, she had like four or five more years in her. I had no idea. But it was tough, you know. I I've done it before with her sister, but it's never easy. I ugly cried so bad in the car after that. It was I I you know, I didn't she'd lived the lifetime of two cats, but it didn't, it in some ways I made it easier, and in some ways harder. Because, you know, we had been together so long, because you know, I had gone straight through school and then done master's degree. It was I I didn't I didn't really feel like I had started adulting until that time when I got her, and so it was I did I did all the adult things, you know, like get married, get divorced, buy a house, sell the house, all of that, go through all the job stuff, you know, I I had some major depression and she she was there through it, you know. You know, I had some I had some moments where I was like, I can't do this anymore. Um and but then I thought if I'm not here, I thought, if I'm not here, nobody's gonna want this fucking cat. And it it I think she saved me. I think a lot of us or most of us who have these pets, when they're gone, you you start to see them even though they're not there. So I went through that phase. I all of a sudden had disposable income again, which again again is part of that like grieving cycle where it was like, it sucked beyond belief, but also I was like, oh my gosh, I have money again. So when she was gone, it it sucked that she wasn't there, but it got easier. I'd slept in my own bed with my wife again. That was part of the grieving thing, too. I'm like, oh, I just got married and starting life over again. This is fantastic, but I I'm resigned to the guest room. It wasn't because we were fighting, it was because of the damn cat. And and and I'd be down there and I'm like, well, at least I'm sleeping, but what what am I doing? But I owed it to that cat. Life got easier when she was gone, even though I've missed her. It's it's so weird because you're you're having all the feelings at once. And it's it's a roller coaster, and it took so long for me to just not randomly break down. It it took a while to reach equilibrium.
SPEAKER_01What memorials do you have to goose? Where does she live on around you now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I've I've got a couple pictures of her up, but in addition to the um collage that I made with a with one the one picture of every year from every year of her life, um, I have a little shadow box where I've got a couple of my favorite pictures, and I've got I've got her paw prints from when she passed. I I've got one of her favorite toys, which is hilarious because it's got 21 years of Goose Saliva on it, one of the little dude she used to carry around the house, and one of her whiskers in there.
SPEAKER_01So what did Goose teach you about this life?
SPEAKER_00I think resilience. I mean, you never know what you can get through. I literally lost track of all the ER visits. She would bounce back. It was insane how she'd bounce back, and I think that's what she taught me is that man, you can get through some really tough stuff. But I also think that she taught me it's okay to be you. It's okay to be yourself. I mean, she was she was just her own damn cat. She was grouchy as shit, but also super sweet, you know.
SPEAKER_01If there is an afterlife, if there is that rainbow bridge and we get to see our pets again, what is the first thing you will say to Goose?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'd have to talk to her in her own language with the little gravelly voice. So I wouldn't, you know, or I'd just tell her about my day, but you know, I'd have a conversation with her and she'd talk back to me and go in her little scratchy voice. Right where we left off.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and share with your friends. If you have a dead pet that you'd like to share, please send an email to dead pets official at gmail.com. Dead Pets is a wild media industries production. It is written and hosted by me, Elise Wilde. Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. Anatola Franz.