Grief is a funny thing. I acted in ways I never had previously all because my brother died. Maybe that’s why I decided to gamble on the following action and the pros really weren’t worth the cons. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I never once claimed to be smart and the next entry will be solid evidence to back my claim.
Life is going okay, lets fuck shit up!
So lets review what has happened so far.
I was a person who had dealt with mental health issues nearly all my life and had found a system that (sort of) worked for me. I was an active fitness enthusiast and I had previously started taking antidepressants. Then my little brother died and those things didn’t work anymore (or they probably would have worked, if I hadn’t stopped them in my grief). Following over six months of (often self inflicted) pain, suffering and mental breakdowns, I finally got into therapy after years of saying it would never be something for me.
Through therapy, I was able to get well enough to implement fitness and antidepressants back into my life so I had three active things for mental health going for me. I was still sad and had issues with anger (and a shitty personality), but at least I held it together for my family and work colleagues.
Life finally seemed to be getting back on track.
After a night of hanging out with some mutual friends who had recently become cat people, an idea popped into my head. I wanted a cat.
Previously agreed upon terms and conditions
My husband and I are dog people. We had agreed to only have the one dog and very specifically never get cats because they stressed out my husband (he previously had roommates with shitty cats that ruined his stuff). In our youth, we both had pretty rad cats but agreed it just wasn’t worth the gamble of adopting a cat and it possibly destroying our furniture (or giving our house that acidic pee smell most cat houses carry).
All that be damned though, I went down a rabbit hole of the positivity of cats on the brain and mental health (the algorithm got me).
I discussed wanting a cat with my husband but he was adamant of never getting a cat like we had previously agreed (fair). After weeks of me being sad about a cat I liked at the pet store near our home getting adopted, he conceded that if I ever met a cat as cool as that one again (he had said it seemed nice in passing), then we could look into getting a cat.
So obviously I did the only sane and rational next step that anyone would do. I went online to look at all available cats for adoption in our city. I found a cat (kitten actually) that resembled one I had growing up with my brother in our childhood home. So that is to say, I really wanted to get my childhood cat’s doppelgänger.
It was a fight. There were tears and manipulation on my end that I’m not proud of, but we got that fucking cat.
Meet Sir Reginald Poofington the 3rd – or as my husband likes to call him “your shitty therapy cat”
Disclaimer, Reggie is not actually a trained therapy cat, it’s just what my husband started calling him after we got him since my basis for doing so was entirely mental health/managing my sadness related
Look at that adorable fluffy face and tell me it doesn’t give you warm fuzzies. Do it you goddamn psychopath. You did it? Good. Now here’s the thing, he almost ruined my marriage.
My husband and I been the owners of beautiful Doberman/Shepherd cross for years. Our only dog. A good dog. A trained dog. A dog with a perfect temperament. Reggie turned out to be a tiny fluffy fucking menace.
Reggie would cry at all hours of the night and get into all sorts of mischief (normal cat stuff to be honest). I spent many nights sleeping outside my bedroom to ensure the cats behaviour stayed in check so my husband could sleep but that didn’t make my husband happy either.
I loved the cat, my son loved the cat, but my husband (and dog) fucking hated the cat with 1000 intensities of the sun. Between sleep deprivation and being on edge from my husbands hatred of the tiny ball of orange fluff, our household was stressed.
Still, I had gotten into a rhythm with the cat and he really did help me in various ways with his adorable asthmatic purr and early morning affection before my workouts. I looked forward to his cuddles and while litter boxes are still fucking gross, overall I really really loved him.
Double down, you dumb bitches
There was never any “aha” moment for the cat and my husband. Things just eventually set in and our new normal became our lives. There were many conversations about the cats behaviour, many tears and hard times but eventually, by the grace of the god I don’t believe in, our household levelled out enough to not be fighting over the cat all the time.
That’s when my family went to the pet store near our house without me (the same fated pet store from earlier in our story) and found Benson. It turned out that after meeting Benson, my husband had told my son that “if I said it was okay”, we could adopt Benson.
Benson was NOT a fluffy cute kitten. Benson was a scraggly sad looking motherfucker that seemed like he had been through hell and back again. He would not have been my first choice of an animal and I questioned if my families eyes worked properly.
To this day, I don’t know what my husband was thinking by putting the onus on me to get another animal. I, who had experienced over a year of being unhinged by that point, was not a person to make such jokes with. Since obviously I went to the pet-store and got that fucking cat too.
After a few months of love, Benson’s scraggly look got a natural makeover. His fur got sleek and soft, his downcast eyes got round and inquisitive and his overall look and mood shifted to that of an adorable playful cat.
My husband likes to comment that Benson’s personality is how a cat is supposed to be, unlike my shitty therapy cat. I always want to point out that if I could feel the contempt radiating from his body towards Reggie, so could the cat, but that doesn’t sound like a fun fight to have, so my mouth will stay shut on that one.
All’s well that ends well, right?
Poof. Just like that, our previously zero cat household that became a one cat household and hated it, became a two cat household.
Reggie’s behaviour became better by having another cat to annoy instead of my husband and the atmosphere in our home actually got better. Which…not really the gamble I would suggest taking but a happy ending to what I thought might end in divorce.
That said, the stress of getting cats wasn’t worth the payoff. I love them both dearly but during a time our family was still grieving, I added even more stressors into our lives. I disregarded my husbands feelings and manipulated the situation to get something I wanted. I couldn’t see what I was doing at that time, but I certainly see it now and it ultimately could been a much different outcome.
We’re moving onto catalyst two of three next week which is when I learned that heart and metabolic diseases were closer to home than originally thought.
Until next week!
Sincerely,
Sammy
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