How Many Garden Cats Can Float on a Downy Feather?

June 8, 2026 Bernadette

A sweet little visit this morning in the garden, but who was it, or how many garden cats can float on a downy feather?

Turning around in my garden this morning I just happened to catch the last bit of descent of something small and light-colored slowly floating toward one of my garden beds. I guessed it might be a bird’s downy feather seeing the soft, unhurried tumble of this bit of light.

I stood still and watched the descent, seeing it disappear behind the wood border of a raised bed, but I didn’t see it land. Marking by eye where it disappeared I made my way around and between four raised beds to the approximate spot.

I wouldn’t have been surprised, but would have been disappointed, if I had not found whatever this visitor was. But there, in delicate detail, it was a small downy feather, pearl gray, just a shade off of white. Downy bird feathers can be similar enough from one bird to another that the species is difficult to identify right on the spot.

In the garden, under the chicken wire cover for this bed.

So who’s visiting?

So of course, it’s morning in the garden, and I turned around just in time to witness the last moments of the feather fall so I presumed this was a “little visit.” I wondered which one of the many garden cats who had joined me on mornings there over 36 years might have sent the feather as a sign they were there with me in spirit. Or purrhaps not just one, but which pair, or trio, or generation had come together to enjoy each others’ company in the morning garden?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cookie lately, so many photos of her out in the garden with me, wandering the rows, sleeping in the dirt, lying on one of the paths and watching me through squinted eyes that would blink when we made eye contact. She was with me outside in all seasons, but I remember her most in spring. And lately with Namir, in his last two springs, how close those two became with unspoken communication and Cookie rolling her eyes at Namir’s hijinks like pulling her tail when he thought she didn’t see him.

For my “from the archives” posts for the weekend I found a trove of photos of Cookie in the spring, and also of Cookie and Namir, and had a truly difficult time deciding which ones for this week and next week…. And then the feather appeared today.

But I’ve also been thinking about Mr. Max, most recent in 2025, and Kublai, back in 1996, and even Bootsie in 1986, and Mimi and Mewsette, and Giuseppe and Mr. Sunshine, and Jelly Bean, Basil, Moses, and more, not necessarily all garden cats, and not necessarily memories but visualizing them in this updated garden…I get the sense they are always near me out there and that’s not only why I’m always thinking of them, but why I visualize them in this garden, today.

I’ve said more than once that the garden is fertile ground for more than food and flowers. I guess it’s fertile ground for all my thoughts and memories, and all those of the cats who shared the garden or who just shared my life and loved that space as much as me, and for all the love we shared.

The vase on my kitchen windowsill that holds some of my mementos of the little visits.

Pet Loss in the First Person

From the time I began writing about my experiences in pet loss, relating what I was feeling and thinking about it as I moved through grief, readers have thanked me, often in private, for my honesty, grateful to know another shared their feelings as they moved through grief, or helped them make a decision.

Little visits

You never know where the messages will come from or how the visitor will appear to you. But they will. They love and care about you as they did in life and still want to be near you.

Thank you for following our grief journey after losing three members of our feline family.

I hope sharing our experiences have helped you in some way, as sharing my experiences with you helps me.

You can read all the articles related to their loss by tapping one of these images in the side bar and in articles.

Read more articles about Pet Loss in the First Person, my personal losses, about Pet Loss and other Essays on The Creative Cat.

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It’s Mimi napping in the shadow on the cool bricks among the geraniums, near the vintage aluminum tub where I grow pole beans. Read more and order.

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