Let me explain.
My husband and I recently quit drinking alcohol. Our consumption was to a level that scared me for longer than I'd like to admit, so quitting was simply not an option after a certain point. Not surprisingly, our lives did a complete 180 very quickly once we cut alcohol out of our lives. We had money, made long-needed home improvements, felt healthier, started working full-time again...literally everything changed for the better.
It wasn't until this turnaround that I finally understood how my alcohol consumption affected every aspect of my life. And so, while I was proud of my sobriety, I also felt depressed realizing that I have wasted so much time bumming around hammered when I could have been moving forward faster. There was also a sense of resentment that my husband and I can't drink like other people. I didn't know if I could ever get over these issues and the anxiety that came along with them.
Enter Roland, the coolest Maine Coon mix alive. I had been waiting for a long time to finally get a cat with my husband, basically since we first started dating. Rightly so, Matt would always say pets needed to wait until we had our shit together. Well, that didn't come even remotely close to happening until we had been sober for awhile. This past spring, we finally decided to start looking for a cat, and as if fated, a longtime friend of mine let me know she had a litter of kittens she was giving away. Within a few weeks, I had gone to visit the kittens and Roland literally walked into the carrier and fell fast asleep. I didn't pick him, he picked me.
Suddenly all of the negativity stuffed inside of me floated away. It didn't matter in the slightest. All of the struggling we went through became so worth it in the face of our adorable kitten. I immediately went into mom mode when I adopted the coolest cat ever. I understood that had I gotten him five months earlier, I wouldn't have even been able to afford cat food, much less vet expenses. I couldn't have been adult enough to do anything right for him if I were still a hot mess. Being sober made it possible, falling ridiculously in love with Roland sealed the fact that being a functioning adult is not an option. So thank you, Roland for rescuing me from future hot mess prospects.
My husband fell in love immediately, too, and I can see the change in him now that he's Roland's dad. He is a million times happier, and even seems more confident in himself and his sobriety--Roland has given Matt a reason to be his favorite version of himself. For that, Roland is a giant hero rescuer. He helped bring out the very best parts of my husband, the parts that I fell so in love with years ago.
Roland rescued my sense of home and family. Growing up with divorced parents, I would say I was definitely luckier than most kids in broken home situations. But even so, I never felt like I had a real home. I never ate at just one dinner table, or had one bedroom, or even just one address. From the time I was 7 until I was in my mid-twenties, I rarely spent even a week sleeping under the same roof. Even when I moved out of my parents' homes, I never felt I had a home of my own.
When Matthew and I bought our current place, I was so excited to create my OWN concept of home and by extension, my own concept of family. While we began to do this from the very beginning of our marriage, it took Roland's presence to truly make our house feel like a home. He greets us at the door when we get home, follows us everywhere, trills for attention, and snuggles with us every morning and night. When he loves on me, my heart of course melts, but not like it does when I see the love between Roland and Matt. They are truly best friends and they're both so cool, it just makes me feel so lucky to be a wife and cat mom to these two. We are a unit and this house is our habitat. I couldn't imagine my life any other way. I finally have my perfect home and perfect family, all under one tin roof.
I admit that the cheddar ratio in this post was quite high, but I really wanted to write a post that would begin to explain just why I'm so obsessed with my cat.
He rescued us, he deserves credit where it's due.
Oh, and Roland also rescues us from spiders. He likes to snack on them. So that's pretty cool, too.
Xo*
Jess
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