Keepsakes Worth Making While They're Still Here

There is a specific category of keepsake that cannot be created after the fact, or that becomes much harder and sadder to attempt in the days after a death. Making them while your animal is alive and well is not morbid. It is just doing it while it is easy.

The ones that must be done in advance

• A lock of fur. The clearest example. Cut it from the chest or the neck where it is thickest and least noticeable, put it in a small envelope or a zip bag, and write the date on it. It takes thirty seconds. Nobody who has done this has regretted it, and a great many people wish they had.
• A paw print in clay. Air-dry clay from any craft shop. Press gently, let it dry flat over a day or two. A vet can also do an ink print at a routine visit if you ask.
• A voice recording. The bark at the gate, the specific noise they make when you come home, the snoring. This is the one people forget entirely and miss most — sound fades from memory much faster than images.
• A video of them moving. Not a photo. Thirty seconds of them running, or doing the ridiculous thing they do before dinner.
• A photo of you together. Most people have a thousand photos of their pet and almost none of the two of them. Hand your phone to someone.

Do it on an ordinary day

The trick to this not feeling grim is to do it when nothing is wrong. Take the fur on a random Tuesday. Do the paw print while they nap after a walk. It becomes a small ritual rather than a farewell.

Label everything

Write the date and their name on whatever you make and put it somewhere you will find it in ten years. Fur in an unlabelled bag in a drawer becomes a mystery. A dated envelope becomes an heirloom.

What we make

Our own keychain is built around exactly this. The paw unclips so a lock of fur sits behind it, with their name pressed on the back, and it lives on your keys rather than in a cupboard. It works whether your animal is fourteen or four — and if they are four, take the fur anyway and keep it in an envelope until you want it.