Parting ways with a loved pet companion is hard but death leaves no choice besides saying goodbye. Dawn O’Porter, a proud owner of a 16-year-old Siamese cat named Lilu, was not ready to give up her pet even after it passed away.
O’Porter realized she couldn’t live without the cat as she wrote: “I not only mourned Lilu but I craved the endorphin hit of feeling fur against my skin. I longed for the affection she offered my ankles as I filled her bowl, the endless hours I’d spent alone as a writer with her next to me, curled up in a ball, ready for me to bury my face into her when the frustration of a blank page became too much to bear.”
What does the lady do when the pain of grief feels intolerable? Surely, she can’t go to the grave with the dead cat.
She thought of a creative, slightly twisted solution. O’Porter decided to keep the cat in her house even in a morbid state as she added: “I dealt with her death in the way that felt right for me and no one else. I had her freeze-dried, a process where she was dehydrated using extremely cold temperatures over the course of 10 months, preserving her perfectly to look just as she did on the day she died, and now she sits happily, but 100% dead, on a chair in my dining room.”
This woman is an animal lover with all sorts of living and dead things stored in her house. After the death of Lilu, she rescued two cats named Myrtle and Boo. O’Porter explains her living situation by stating: “That brings my household to the grand total of two cats (or two and a half, if you count the dead one in the dining room), two dogs, two kids and a husband. Apart from the kids and the husband, I have big plans to extend the family even further. I love how pets make a home feel and the community you enter into when you get one.”
If we go off her family order, the dead cat may be given more importance than her living children. O’Porter fits the crazy cat lady description well.