Cuddle Clones
When it came time to start our site, I really wanted to promote Cuddle Clones, a company that makes custom-made stuffed animals based on your pet’s appearance (among a great many other products commemorating your animal companion). This is the way it works: You send them photos of your pet (head, back, tail, etc.) and some time later, a stuffed animal replica of your pet arrives.
Nothing can take away the pain of losing your beloved animal companion, but Cuddles Clones can help fill the empty space left behind by your animal’s absence. It is something to put on your lap while reading or watching TV, something to put in that spot where your pet used to nap, something to cuddle with at night.
I have personally been comforted by these extremely well-made replicas and I am pleased to be able to promote them here at Animals in the Light.
Lucy had been gone for a year when her Cuddle Clone arrived. I placed it on the dresser where she often liked to sit in the summertime. Of course, I knew it wasn’t her when I looked directly at it, but I would often seen it out of the corner of my eye I think it was her. Each time my heart seemed to stop until I realized, okay, no, just the Cuddle Clone.
Eventually, I got to used to it being there. It was tremendously reassuring to see Lucy watching over the room the way she always had in life.
Buffy had been gone over two decades when I ordered her Cuddle Clone. She had been with my family more than 17 years. She had ushered me through grammar school, high school, and college. Cuddle Clone absolutely got her appearance spot on, from her ringed tail to her two different-colored eyes.
I was going through an extremely rough time period when her Cuddle Clone was delivered. Shortly after I opened the box, I hugged her the way I might of hugged my old cat as a kid. When I saw that tail and those three brown spots on her back (without her clearly stuffed-animal-like head in my field of view), for a moment it truly felt like a reunion in the afterlife. It was an amazingly profound and emotional experience.
I actually purchased Mrs. Claws’s Cuddle Clone several years before she died, but I put it away because it seemed disrespectful to keep it out.
One of the first things I did after she died, when her body was taken away, was to put her Cuddle Clone where she always slept in the last years of her life. Because she was such a fixture on the bed, the idea of an empty space where her toasted-marshmallow form should have been broke my heart. Seeing her Cuddle Clone there brought me tremendous comfort.
I never mistook the Cuddle Clone for the real Mrs. Claws, but there are times when, if I look at it long enough, I almost expect it to stand and walk over to me the way she always did when I got home.
In the days following Mrs. Claws’s passing, the other cats spent time on the bed with her Cuddle Clone. They had been in the room when Mrs. Claws died. They had smelled her empty body. They knew she was gone. Yet the way they spent time with her Cuddle Clone made me think it helped them adjust to her departure.
Copyright © 2019 by Jamie Butler & Brian Mercer