When her ‘soul cat’ died, she was bereft. Now she designs memorial jewelry to help others with pet loss

A layoff and a leap of faith convinced Katie Teixeira she had what it takes to run her own business

In 2010, Katie Teixeira adopted a kitten found all alone in an abandoned house. The kitten – so tiny she fit in the palm of Teixeira’s hand – needed to be bottle-fed every few hours. For weeks, Teixeira set her alarm for middle-of-the-night feedings and drove home on her lunch break to care for the kitten she named Milo. As the cat grew, so did the connection between them.

“We just bonded,” Teixeira says. “Like mother and daughter.”

Eventually, Teixeira and her husband adopted four more cats, but Milo, a tabby with white toes, maintained a special place in Teixeira’s heart. “People talk about soul animals,” she says. “Milo was my soul cat.”

When Milo died in 2021, Teixeira was bereft. She wanted a way to commemorate her. While Teixeira, who was working as a procurement analyst for CVS Health at the time, had seen pet memorial jewelry online, keepsakes that sometimes included the animal’s ashes or fur, “it just didn’t speak to me”, she says. “I’ve always been artistic and very crafty. So I was like, let me try doing something myself.”