About

From s.e. smith, author of All My Dead Cats and Other Losses: Practicing Good Grief in a Culture That Fears Mourning, Tell Your Cat I Said... offers empathetic, friendly, and informative advice on some of the biggest decisions pet guardians will make: End-of-life choices for their companion animals.

Don't let the name fool you—we're species-inclusive in this household. Tell Your Cat I Said... includes discussions about palliative care, hospice, euthanasia, memorial planning, talking with children about pet loss, navigating conversations around quality of life and disability, and so much more.

s.e. smith is a Northern California-based journalist, essayist, author, and critic. They report on contemporary culture, including disability, technology, feminism, death and dying, and animal welfare. In the course of their reporting on animal welfare and loss, s.e. has talked to thousands of pet guardians, veterinary clinicians, animal welfare experts, mental health providers, death doulas, and related death workers. In addition to being a journalist, they have spent decades in and around veterinary health settings, from summers at their aunt’s veterinary clinic as a teenager to supporting operations at a busy animal shelter and clinic.

Their cultural criticism and reported features have appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, Time, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The Verge, Esquire, and The Nation, and were recognized with a National Magazine Award in 2020 in Columns and Commentary for the “An Unquiet Mind” column in Catapult Magazine. Their work also appears in numerous anthologies, most recently Disability Intimacy (Vintage, 2024). They are a cofounder and worker-owner of The Flytrap, a feminist journalism collective.