I had big plans for the start of 2025. Like, spreadsheet-level plans. The Brand Blueprint Builder was going to launch, I was going to hit the ground running, and everything was going to slot neatly into place like one of those satisfying Tetris moments.
Instead, I spent the first two months of this year in survival mode. And I’m writing this from Thailand, trying to make sense of it all.
Let me rewind.
The renovation that ate our lives
In the second half of last year, my partner David and I decided to tackle our outdoor area. Replace all the windows. Expand the patio doors. Paint the interior. Mechanically grind the concrete floors. You know, just a casual little project.
Except when you have two ADHD brains in a household, “let’s just do the windows” somehow becomes “let’s do literally everything at once.” Which meant we ended up displaced from our own home and living across three different Airbnbs. One before Christmas and two in the new year.
Everything that could go wrong, did. I won’t bore you with the full list because honestly, I’m still tired just thinking about it. But let’s just say my stress levels have been running on a frequency only dogs and people who’ve renovated can truly understand.
I told myself that February would be the month everything calmed down. We’d be settled back into the house. I’d have my desk. My routine. My focus. The Brand Blueprint Builder would finally get the attention it deserved.
But the universe, as it turns out, had other ideas entirely.
Losing my girl
In February, my beautiful cat Kitty G passed away. She was 16 and she was, without exaggeration, the most majestic creature I’ve ever known.
Her full name was Kitten Guts (don’t ask) and she had the kind of personality that could fill a room. She was opinionated. She was bossy. She had a long, glorious tail that she would strategically drape across my face while I slept, as if to remind me even in my unconscious hours that she was in charge.
Of course, David was overseas for work when she went downhill. We’d always joked that it would happen that way.
Even on her last good day, she was doing her usual menacing thing of standing over my head during yoga and tapping it with her big furry paw. But later that day something changed. I think she may have had a neurological episode. Over the next few days she gradually lost the use of her legs, and after three hospital visits, she passed away from a cardiac arrest.
I’ve lost pets before. I lost my other cat Merlot in late 2023. But this one hit me differently. Really differently.
More than a pet
I think what caught me off guard was realising just how much of my daily life was built around her. Kitty wasn’t just a cat who lived in my house. She ran it.
She was my alarm clock. She told me when to start the day by standing over me and tapping my face with her paw. And if I dared to ignore her? A slight extension of the claws. Just enough to let me know she meant business. She told me when to stop working by loitering impatiently around my desk from about 5pm, and by 6pm if I hadn’t stopped to feed her, she let me know about it. Vocally.
She even told me when to go to bed. If I was sitting in the living room past her approved bedtime, she would park herself strategically in front of the stairs and stare at me. If I didn’t acknowledge her? Again, vocal.
She had lived in our house longer than we had. Every time David and I travelled, we got house sitters specifically for her. I used to joke that it was her house and we were the guests. When I moved to Mexico back in 2014 with my ex-husband, I had friends move into my place for 18 months to care for Kitty and Merlot. I flew back multiple times just to be with them.
And when I came home after my divorce, it was Kitty who was there. She laid by my side while I cried at 3am for months. She didn’t fix anything. She didn’t need to. She was just there. And sometimes that’s the most powerful thing anyone can offer you.
David and I have been together for 10 years now, and so much of our life together has included Kitty at the centre of it. It’s strange sitting on the couch now without her wedged between us, her back against him, her eyes on me. Our new couch arrived not long after she passed and all I could think was that she would have loved it.
I still catch myself every time I walk through the front door, bracing for her reaction. The impatient meow because I haven’t fed her yet. The lazy yawn because I’ve disturbed an afternoon nap. It takes a second to remember she’s not there.
Leaving for this trip to Thailand was hard in a way I didn’t expect. Not because of the travel itself, but because I didn’t need to prepare the house for a sitter. I didn’t need to make sure she had enough food. There was nothing to sort for her. And that absence is its own kind of grief.
And here’s the part that’s complicated to admit. Travelling is objectively less stressful now. No house sitter to organise. No detailed feeding instructions to write out. No worrying about whether she’s okay while I’m on the other side of the world. And I feel guilty even acknowledging that. Because I would give anything to be writing those instructions again.
The love that showed up
One of the things that surprised me most was the outpouring of love from other people. So many reached out. Friends sent flowers. Her vet, who loved her too, sent flowers. A common message from those who had met her was “she turned me into a cat lover”. Within an hour of her passing, one of my close friends (who I run Women of the West with) was on my doorstep.
And then there was this.
Friends had a poem written from Kitty to me. I read it and sobbed like an absolute baby. I still can’t get through it without tearing up.
“Though the skies are my home now, come 5am, if you wake, it’s because I’ve visited you. Paw by paw, white striped nose, I’m always moving my heart closer to yours, even now.”
I mean, come on.
Pet loss is a special kind of grief that not everyone understands. But if you’ve been through it, you know. These animals become woven into the fabric of your daily existence in ways you don’t fully appreciate until they’re gone. They are witnesses to your worst moments and your best ones. They don’t care about your launch timelines or your to-do lists. They just want to sit on your keyboard at the most inconvenient moment possible. And somehow, that’s everything.
So where does this leave the Brand Blueprint Builder?
It’s coming. It really is. The work has been done, the process is mapped out, and I genuinely cannot wait to put it into your hands. But I’m giving myself the grace to let it arrive when it’s ready rather than when my original spreadsheet said it should.
If the past two months have taught me anything, it’s that timelines are suggestions, not promises. Life will always do its own thing regardless of what you’ve planned. And sometimes the most strategic thing you can do for your business is to take care of yourself first.
I’m heading into the rest of this year with a clearer head, a quieter house, and the kind of perspective that only comes from being knocked around a bit by life. The Brand Blueprint Builder will launch. New things are in the works. And I’ll be sharing it all with you when it happens.
In the meantime, if you’ve recently lost a pet and you’re feeling that particular kind of hollow, I see you. It’s real grief. It matters. And that animal was lucky to have you, just like I was lucky to have my ridiculous, bossy, magnificent Kitty G.
Rest easy, girl. Your house is still standing. But it’s a lot quieter without you in it.
