Living away from your cat.
It’s a horrifying thought isn’t it?
As a helicopter cat parent and luxury cat hotel owner, the prospect of living without my cats for more than a week is unthinkable. From the moment I emerged from the womb, cats have been my best friends and roommates.
Until I moved away to college when I graduated from high school. It wasn’t always easy living in a dorm without my childhood furry feline, Siggy. But I took solace in knowing I was only an hour away (or two depending on traffic) from urgent cat cuddle therapy.
For the first time in my 18-year old daughter’s life, she will be living without her beloved cat Maximus Decimus Meridius by her side. As I write this blog post, we are in the process of moving her into her dorm at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. Three thousand miles away from the cat she rescued when she was four years old.
Mags spied him first at Hart Park in Orange, California. A scraggly kitten no more than five months old, he was sitting on one of the pillars squeeking his little heart out. Starved of attention, food, and shelter, he meowed his way into Margaret’s heart first, and then ours. We later learned that he was maybe a week away from death due to the severity of his flea infestation. So we named him after The Gladiator for being a fierce fighter.
