Wunderry Plus subscribers can listen to USA Today's The Excerpt, ad free right now.

Join Wunderry Plus in the Wundery app.

Hello and welcome to the excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Sunday, September 8th, 2024. losing a pet can be devastating. Animals become part of our lives and part of our families

and that treasure time together often feels far too short.

How do we make sense of those feelings and cope when we lose our

free loved ones? Tom Nichols, a staff writer at the Atlantic,

examined some of his own emotions in the wake of his cat Carla's passing and

joins me now to discuss.

Tom, thanks for being on the excerpt today.

Thanks for having me.

So Tom, we should just tell our listeners and viewers that pets is not your regular beat.

You normally write about politics.

So just start out if you would, Tom, by telling us about your experience with pets.

Did you grow up with them? And who was your first but? I did. I grew up with

cats. I wanted a dog when I was a little boy but my family thought that was high maintenance and it turns out it wasn't a very attentive little boy so dogs were you know sort of more than I was able to take care of and then when I was in first grade we got a little gray kitten and because I grew up with the Dick and Jane

Spot and Puff readers that all children in the you know early 1960s read I

imagine have imaginatively named my cat puff after the

cat in the book so my very first cat was a wonderful gray cat named puff and we had him right until I was in almost through high school.

Wow and so I mentioned Carla in the intro. Who was Carla? Tell us about her and how you found her.

Oh, Carla was actually in the window of the veterinarian that was right downstairs from me when I was living in downtown Newport, Rhode Island. I was 50-ish, my late 40s, early 50s, I was recently

divorced, I was just a mess. You know, I was depressed, I was drinking too much, and I would take

walks because downtown Newport's a nice place to take a walk and I would go past this window where the veterinarian had adoptable animals and there was this beautiful regal-looking black cat

...