The speaker mourns a beloved animal that has just died, though the poem never names her species. It opens with a riddle whose answer is left unspoken: a house is empty when the one who mattered is gone. The family now sees that "Chewy," who had so many names, should have been called Uhuru, meaning freedom, because she valued freedom above them. Her death is pictured as an escape from their "soft clutches" of love.
The speaker's feelings are tender and guilty at once. They took her from her mother too early, and she began as a frightened creature "no bigger than my fist." Over time she came to love them as fiercely as they loved her. Others feared her, but the family only wanted her to curl up against them.
The mood is quiet and sorrowful. The short, plain lines feel like someone struggling to speak. The closing image of rain, "cats and dogs," adds a faint, bitter irony to the burial.