Comment on Gone too soon: Coping with the loss of a young pet by Tracy Moon.

We had a beautiful 5-year-old cat lovingly named after Elvis Presley. When he was two we found out that he had a congenital heart condition that he was placed on medication for. He had been doing good until one day when he couldn’t walk on his back legs and screamed out in pain when he moved. It turned that he developed a blood clot due to congenital heart failure (the same thing that I lost my father too many years ago), and we had to put him down. This has been an absolutely horrific experience that we are still coming to terms with. The one thing that has come from this is when I went on the website of the cardiologist that he had been scheduled to see to cancel his appointment was that they literally started a blood bank donation program 2 days after he died for cats. We immediately enrolled our other cat, Salem, in the program. Through this program which was very much lacking in our community, he will be able to help other cats through his blood donations giving people the chance to save their beloved pets. This has been a very powerful way to help us deal with our grief and honor Elvis’ memory.