Yesterday, we had to put our family Cat down. Bizkit was a stray, and we had her for about the last year of her life. She succumbed to lymphoma on June 1.
This was my kids' first taste of this kind of grief, and that is the greatest gift from all of this. Losing a pet is kind of like getting an immunization against losing a family member. You'll still get the grief, but you have a little experience, you've grown a little. It doesn't get easier, but you get more tools every time.
