Greetings, my lovely feral, dark, and bright ones,

I have been doing some serious thinking lately about my fur babies, but the deeper I have gone into those thoughts, the more I have realized that what I am really thinking about is love. Love, loss, time, regret, and all the relationships we build while we are here. Since 2022, we have lost three precious fur babies, and every one of those losses has left its own wound. Their passings did not simply make me sad for a while and then become something I learned to live around. They changed me. They did damage to my spirit, my heart, my mind, and some deep part of my being that I am not sure will ever return to exactly what it was before.

Some people will understand that kind of grief immediately, while others may never understand it at all. There are people who see an animal as a pet, something separate from the human family, but I have never experienced love that way. When an animal becomes part of my family, they become part of me. Their routines become intertwined with mine. I know the sounds they make when they are happy, irritated, hungry, sleepy, playful, or getting into something they absolutely know they should not be getting into. I know where they like to sleep and how they ask for attention. I know their personalities, their quirks, their favorite things, and the tiny habits nobody outside our home would ever notice. Their presence becomes so woven into everyday life that it is almost impossible to imagine the house without them until suddenly you are forced to.

Then you discover that grief does not only live in the enormous moments. It lives in the silence where a familiar sound used to be. It lives in an empty sleeping spot, an unused food bowl, a toy nobody plays with anymore, or the strange realization that you no longer need to perform some tiny task you once did every single day. Sometimes it is the absence of an inconvenience that hurts the most, because you would gladly accept every mess, every interruption, every stolen object, every accident, and every moment of chaos if it meant having them back.

The recent losses of our beloved male ferrets, combined with the passing of my mom, have made me look at love differently. So much loss in such a relatively short period of time has forced me to think about all of my relationships—not only my relationships with people, but my relationship with myself, with nature, with my ancestors, with the Gods and Goddesses who walk beside me, with my spirit guides, and especially with the fur babies whose entire lives become intertwined with ours for whatever amount of time we are fortunate enough to have them.

I have found myself asking questions that do not always have easy answers. Did I love them enough? Did I show them that I loved them enough? Did they truly understand how precious they were to me? Did I spend enough time with them? Was I patient enough? Were there moments when I was too busy, distracted, tired, frustrated, or wrapped up in something that ultimately did not matter nearly as much as I thought it did at the time?

And perhaps the question that weighs on me most when I think about my fur babies is this: Did I give them a good life, or did I give them a truly great life?

There is something particularly painful about loving animals because we enter into that relationship already knowing something we desperately wish were not true: in most cases, their lives will be much shorter than ours. We know this intellectually when we bring them home, but knowing something and understanding what it will eventually cost your heart are two entirely different things. At first, there seems to be so much time. There will always be another morning, another playtime, another cuddle, another treat, another ridiculous mess to clean up. Then the years begin moving faster than they have any right to, and eventually you find yourself looking backward, wondering how an entire lifetime managed to fit inside what now feels like such a terribly small amount of time.

That realization has changed the way I move through ordinary days with the fur babies who are still here.

Every night I find myself saying, “Good night, my precious princesses,” to the girls, followed by, “I love you so much.” I kiss them, cuddle them, hug them, and tuck them in. After I get out of work, the ferrets get extra time outside their room, running from our bedroom across the hallway into their room and back again. Sometimes this goes on for hours, and instead of thinking about what else I could be doing, I try to remember that this is part of their life. This silly little journey across the hallway may seem insignificant to me, but to them it is freedom, exploration, excitement, and time spent in the world they share with us.

I go into their room and sit on the rug with them because I do not always want our relationship to happen from my adult human height, with me standing above them and moving on to the next task. Sometimes I want to enter their world instead. I sit on the floor, play with them, watch what they are doing, talk to them, and simply exist beside them for a while. I clean their litter pans, replace the wee-wee pads, clean their habitat, and take care of the inevitable accidents without allowing those things to become bigger than they are. If someone nips me, I understand that this is part of communicating with a ferret, and if a nip becomes a little too enthusiastic, I let them know gently.

Grief has a strange way of changing your perspective on inconvenience. Things that once might have irritated you become things you realize you would someday give almost anything to experience again. One more accident to clean. One more interrupted afternoon. One more little creature underfoot while you are trying to walk. One more stolen object mysteriously disappearing beneath furniture. One more moment of saying, “What on earth are you doing now?” One more ordinary day filled with all the tiny annoyances that prove someone you love is still alive and sharing your home.

I have been trying to carry that awareness into my relationship with our dogs as well. I snuggle with them more. I sit outside with them more often instead of simply opening the door and waiting for them to come back inside. I try to speak more kindly and be more conscious of my patience. Do they still annoy me sometimes? Of course they do. Love does not magically erase irritation, exhaustion, frustration, or the reality that sometimes the beings we adore can drive us completely insane. I am still human. What has changed is that I am trying not to let a temporary irritation become more important than the relationship itself.

I tuck them into bed. I kiss them. I tell them that I love them because I want those words to become part of the rhythm of their lives.

Winston sleeps with us, and lately I have been waking up with him tucked against me, sometimes wrapped in my arms as he presses himself tightly into my side. There is something about waking up that way that has begun affecting me differently. Instead of immediately thinking about getting out of bed, checking the time, starting work, or everything waiting to be done, sometimes I simply lie there and feel him breathing beside me. I hold him for another moment and wonder whether he understands what he means to me.

I hope he does.

I hope all of them do.

Peppermint and I have our morning kitty cuddle time. We play together, she gets her kitty treats, and she comes onto my desk while I am working as though my workspace has always belonged equally to her—which, if you have ever lived with a cat, you already know is probably exactly what she believes. Winston comes into my office and curls up in my pink office chair. The girls lie on the floor nearby because sometimes being close is all they want. We even let Chloe spend time on our bed during the day.

None of these things are extraordinary when viewed individually. They are tiny moments that could easily disappear into the background of an ordinary life, and perhaps that is exactly why I have been thinking about them so much.

We tend to imagine love through its biggest moments. We think about declarations, celebrations, sacrifices, gifts, anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, emergencies, and all the moments significant enough to photograph and remember. Yet I am beginning to believe that the truest measure of love may exist somewhere much quieter.

Love is sitting on the floor when you could be doing something else.

Love is opening the door one more time because someone wants another adventure across the hallway.

Love is sharing your chair, your bed, your time, and sometimes your last nerve.

Love is cleaning up an accident without making someone afraid of you.

Love is recognizing when your frustration belongs to you and choosing not to make someone you love carry it.

Love is giving the treat, scratching the favorite spot, noticing the small change in behavior, sitting outside for a little longer, and putting down whatever feels urgent long enough to be fully present.

Love is saying goodnight.

Love is reaching over in the darkness to touch someone simply because they are there.

Love is saying “I love you” for the thousandth time and still meaning every word.

And then there is Ronnie.

The same questions I ask about my fur babies have begun finding their way into my marriage and into my relationships with the people I love. Do I tell Ronnie that I love him enough? More importantly, do I show him? If all of my words disappeared tomorrow and he could judge my love only by the way I have lived beside him, would he know?

That question sits heavily with me because words are easy to say. “I love you” can become automatic if we are not careful. We say it when someone leaves the house, before hanging up the phone, or before going to sleep, sometimes with hardly a thought behind it. There is nothing wrong with that familiarity; in fact, there is something beautiful about love becoming so deeply embedded in a relationship that the words become instinctive. But I never want the words themselves to become substitutes for the actions that are supposed to give them meaning.

Words without actions eventually become hollow.

If I say I love someone, I want that love to exist in the way I treat them when I am tired, irritated, distracted, grieving, or overwhelmed. I want it to exist in whether I listen when they speak, whether I notice when something is wrong, whether I make time when it would be easier to say “later,” and whether I allow the people and animals I love to feel safe being completely themselves around me.

Because “I love you” is not only something we say.

It is something another living being should be able to feel.

Perhaps that is what all this loss has been trying to teach me.

We live as though there will always be another opportunity. Another conversation. Another visit. Another morning. Another evening. Another cuddle. Another chance to apologize. Another chance to sit on the floor. Another chance to say the words we meant to say yesterday but somehow never got around to saying.

Most of the time, we have absolutely no idea when we are experiencing something for the last time.

Nobody announces that this is the final ordinary morning.

We do not hear music swelling in the background while someone we love walks through the room for what will eventually become one of our most precious memories. There is no warning telling us to put down our phones, stop worrying about the dishes, forget the stupid argument, ignore the clock, and pay attention because this moment will someday matter more than we can possibly understand right now.

It is simply Tuesday.

The dogs need to go outside. The ferrets made another mess. Someone wants attention while we are busy. The cat is sitting somewhere inconvenient. Our partner says something from another room while our mind is somewhere else.

It feels completely ordinary.

Until one day we would give anything to have that ordinary Tuesday back.

That is what I keep thinking about.

I cannot change the past, and I cannot go back and inspect every moment of every relationship to determine whether I loved perfectly, because I know I did not. None of us do. There were days I was impatient. Days I was distracted. Days I could have stayed longer, listened better, cuddled more, spoken more gently, or appreciated something I assumed would always be there.

But I can decide what I do with today.

I can sit on the floor.

I can let them run across the hallway for another hour.

I can give one more kiss before bed.

I can hold Winston a little longer when I wake up with him in my arms.

I can stop what I am doing when Peppermint decides it is time for our morning cuddle.

I can tell Ronnie I love him and then make sure the way I treat him gives those words weight.

I can pay attention to the people I love while they are still here to be noticed.

I can love deliberately.

Not perfectly. Not without frustration, disagreement, bad moods, mistakes, exhaustion, or all the messy things that come with being alive. I do not believe love requires perfection.

But I do believe love requires presence.

And so I find myself wanting to ask something of the people in my life—not after another loss, not someday when one of us is standing beside a grave or holding an urn or wishing desperately for one more conversation, but now, while there is still time to hear the answer and do something with it.

Do I show you that I love you enough?

Do I tell you enough?

When you think about the way I exist in your life, do you feel loved by me?

I do not want reassurance simply because it is comforting. If the answer is no, or not always, I would rather know now. I would rather have the opportunity to listen, to understand, and to love better while love can still be given and received.

Maybe that is one of the deepest lessons grief leaves behind.

We spend so much of our lives believing we have more time.

More time to call.

More time to visit.

More time to forgive.

More time to play.

More time to sit together.

More time to say what needs to be said.

More time to show what we assume someone already knows.

Until suddenly, we do not.

So if you love someone—human, animal, or any precious being who has somehow become part of the landscape of your heart—perhaps the question is not simply whether you love them.

Maybe the question is whether they can feel it.

Because someday, one of you will be left with memories of all those ordinary Tuesdays.

And while we cannot control how much time we are given, we can decide what we do with the time that is still ours.

We can make the ordinary moments matter.

We can say the words and live the actions that give those words meaning.

We can hold them a little longer.

We can sit on the floor.

We can pay attention.

We can love them now.

While they are here.

While we are here.

While there is still time.