over the rainbow bridge

welcome to the rainbow bridge, feel free to stay a while and take a moment to think of the animals you've loved and love. we're all very warm and sleepy here.

21/01/24: i've got to be honest, i never really understood why people liked the concept of a rainbow bridge, and when i was a child i used to think it was kinda silly, even after we lost mimir. i think it was because the rainbow bridge (or at least the pages i saw on catster) seemed inherently connected to a christian belief in heaven which i have never had. i lost heimdall today though, and i get it now. right now, i feel like a rainbow bridge is a place for me to memorialise my oldest friend, heimdall, and the love and joy he brought and that i continue to hold for him.

12/10/24: this year has been unkind. we lost bugsy a week ago to the day and i miss him terribly. the world is quieter without my little wretch. i've added a section for him now too. i can only hope that freddie has many more years in him because i'm not sure i could take losing all three in one year.

bugsy

- october 2024

pictured here in a box that he fits in, technically.

bugsy, oh bugsy. a pest and a wretch and the friendliest, most affectionate cat i've ever known. he adored people, and would always seek attention from every guest that crossed our threshold, from the plumber to the aunts. i also have never known a more food-motivated cat than he, which is part of how we realised it was his time; he just didn't care about food any more. i was at uni, and on a wednesday my parents rang to tell me they were going to ring the nice vet that came for heimdall to come at the weekend, because bugs was so so sick. i'd already told them i wanted to come home if he needed to go before christmas, i just hadn't expected it to be quite so soon. i arrived home on friday and burst into tears as soon as i set eyes on him. he was so sick, and could barely sit up - though he did struggle to lift his front half up to meow hello and greet me - i think that was the last time he ever sat up.

the vet was supposed to come saturday afternoon, but when we awoke in the morning, bugsy was already gone. i can't blame him for wanting to go on his own terms, i just wish he has been surrounded by his family at the time. we wrapped him in a baby blue blanket and he rests in the garden with heimdall and mimir. he always adored watching the birds in the hedgerows.

he was my choice of the kittens. i was about 10 or 11. he was my sister's best friend.

heimdall

august 2006 - january 2024

this is a picture of him at his most glorious, fur-wise :)

i remember going to see heimdall and mimir as kittens when i was really young, its probably one of my earliest memories. the breeder had a family cat that was a blind and deaf old grey persian cat and i remember her yelling from another room as we met the kittens. i don't really remember sammy (the cat we had before) so mimir and heimie are my childhood cats. mimir sadly died from unknown causes, but likely some sort of heart attack when he was 4 or 5, and after that heimdall had a complete personality change and became the most needy and affectionate baby you've ever met.

about two or three years ago, he had some heart trouble we discovered he has an enlarged left ventricle. since then, he was a lot slower and started sleeping more, but was still as affectionate towards his family as ever.

he spent the last three hours of his life getting his ears scratched on a soft blanket and has rejoined his brother in the earth of the garden, where he will see many more summers and be close to the birds in the hedgerow.

mimir also died when the ground was hard and frosty, perhaps norwegian forest cats just like it that way :)

mimir

mimir was the cleverest cat we ever had. he was heimdall's brother, and skinnier but with longer fur. he was by far the more affectionate of the two, and extremely adventurous. we used to say you could see him doing trigonometry in his mind as he calculated whether he could make an extreme jump. he died outside, in the winter. i had been at swimming training, and returned in the evening to his cold body. it was some sort of heart attack. we think he was jumping, when it hit, because he was all stretched out in a beautiful arc, like he was leaping from this world to the next. i never thought of it as anything so poetic at the time, though.

sammy

i only have one memory of sammy as he died (age 19!!) when i was 4-ish. he was, according to my mum, a grumpy bastard in his later years; something i feel he earned after moving to a new home and having to fight all the local cats to establish his territory. i recently discovered more photos of him than the handful i knew about so perhaps i will upload some of them here :)