12/14/2025
Today the house is too quiet.
The land is too still.
There is a shape missing from the fabric of things, a silence where a purr used to be, a tuxedo presence that once moved like a small comet through the rooms and now is everywhere and nowhere all at once.
My cat Jaxx died yesterday.
Jaxx, my most magical friend. My companion on the road of medicine. My silent assistant, my co-facilitator, my guardian. The one who always knew when the veil was thin and when the prayers were strong. The one who could walk through a ceremony like a priest in fur, as if the altar extended wherever his paws touched the ground.
He was always there.
Watching.
Tracking.
Holding.
Not in the loud way humans sometimes “hold space,” but in that ancient animal way—bone-deep, breath-deep, dimension-deep. He knew how to be with grief, with rage, with release, with healing, without asking for anything, without trying to fix a single thing. Just presence. Absolute, radiant presence.
Jaxx was the undercover shaman—hiding in plain sight as a cat.
The wild essence of love with whiskers.
The deepest trusting animal I knew.
He watched over countless ceremonies, quietly moving around the circle, choosing where to sit, whose pain to curl up beside. People would arrive burdened, trembling, broken open by life, and there he would be, jumping up on the couch, pressing against their ribs, staring into their soul as if to say, “Yes. I see it. All of it. And it is safe to let it move now.”
He healed and comforted so many without ever using a single word. A tail flick. A slow blink. A little weight pressed gently against a heart. In the middle of night-long prayers when humans were exhausted and lost in their own storms, he would still be there, awake, alert, traveling between worlds, patrolling both the visible and invisible edges of the space.
He was my witness.
He saw all my unravelings and all my joys.
He saw the nights I collapsed onto the earth, undone by sorrow. He saw the mornings I woke up laughing, remembering that life can still be tender, still be good. He received my tears as if they belonged to him too. He received my love, my care, my hands brushing his fur, my whispered apologies when life felt too heavy and I didn’t know how to carry it all.
Now my body is in that strange shock of grief. I keep looking for him around the house. I glance toward the door expecting him to push it open with that particular confidence. I think I hear the sound of his paws on the floorboards, the scratch at the wood, the small “thump” as he lands from somewhere higher. My feet still prepare themselves for his weight, for that familiar moment when he curls up on them during a ceremony and roots me to the earth even more.
Loss rearranges the air.
It changes the way the light falls in the room.
Today every corner feels like an altar to him. The chair he used to claim. The patch of sun where his fur used to glow. The pathways he wore into the grass outside. The invisible routes he knew between this world and the others.
Because Jaxx did not just live in this one dimension.
He walked in many.
You could see it in his eyes when the drum changed tempo, when the rattle shook a certain way, when the wind picked up mid-prayer. He would stare at the empty space beside you with a focus so intense you knew it was not empty at all. He was talking to something. Protecting something. Accompanying something.
So today, as his body returns to the great cycle, I speak to him in the only way that feels true:
May your journey in the heavens be a blessing, beloved friend.
May the paths between the worlds open easily for you, as they always did.
May you travel with the same grace you carried here—tail high, heart open, eyes blazing with mystery.
May you show your whiskers and fierce eyes in our prayers and ceremonies.
Come when the smoke rises.
Come when the songs begin.
Come when someone’s heart is breaking and a small, wild presence is needed to remind them they are not alone.
Thank you, Jaxx, for your service.
For your medicine.
For your infinite love.
Thank you for all the nights you stayed up with me when I didn’t even know how to stay with myself. Thank you for standing guard over the people who came here to heal. Thank you for letting Spirit use your small, fierce body as an instrument of tenderness, courage, and protection.
Some people think “it’s just an animal.” They do not understand that some beings arrive on four legs carrying more wisdom and devotion than many who walk on two. Jaxx was not “just” a cat. He was a guardian of the threshold, a keeper of secrets, a watcher of dreams. He was family. He was kin. He was part of the temple of this home.
So today, I let my heart break open.
I let the tears fall into the soil he walked upon.
I let the grief be a prayer of gratitude for having known him at all.
Grief is the tax we pay on love.
And I loved him deeply.
Wherever you are now, Jaxx—between worlds, beyond worlds, already curled up in the lap of some benevolent Spirit—I trust you know this: you were, and are, beloved. Your pawprints are all over this land, all over this work, all over my heart.
Travel well, my friend.
We will listen for you in the drumbeat.
We will look for you in the shadows by the fire.
We will feel you in the soft weight that sometimes appears on our feet when we pray.
This is not goodbye.
This is:
until the next ceremony,
in whatever world we meet again.
With all my love and all my tears,
Angell
