A Lesson Unlearned

There was a large part of my time as a sanctuary owner when I thought saving a cat meant I’d finished my “job.” I felt like there was some part of every cat who’d eventually become the “perfect cat.” It was as though I thought this actually existed. Somehow I believed that underneath their fear, bad luck, or body that didn’t work right they were there waiting to love love you back in the way you expected a cat to. I thought that I simply had to do my job well enough so they could live their best life.

I no longer believe this. There are a few cats who taught me to believe differently.

Spitz

Spitz doesn’t like being a part of our sanctuary’s general population. We found her as an 8-week-old kitten living with her Mom and siblings next door where a hoarder lived. She was the last of her 3 siblings we found and she was already tired in a way kittens shouldn’t be.

Today, Spitz has her own kennel, and she demands it the way other cats demand food. This isn’t something she’ll compromise about. It also isn’t something she wants just “for now.” No, the kennel is just hers and no other cat is allowed in it.

There was a time when I thought this was a problem I needed to solve. I thought maybe it was only a phase as she recovered from a traumatic experience I could eventually talk her out of. I no longer think this though.

Now I realize that Spitz isn’t broken. She just knows what she needs, and what she needs is a door she can be on the other side of. It’s a place she can call her own.

Gem

Gem has IBS. There’s no other way of saying it. She will never overcome this illness and magically become a low-maintenance cat. There is just days that are better or worse for reasons I don’t always understand. On those worse days she needs kenneled so the litter box is beside her where she can quickly get to it.

There was a time when I felt strangely embarrassed by cats like this. They had no breakthrough, no “happy ending” where everything is suddenly fine.

There’s a lesson in this though. Thanks to Gem I learned that “fine” was never really the goal. Managed is not a lesser word than healed. It’s just a quieter one.

Oreo

Oreo was thrown from a second-story window. I don’t say that for effect. I say it because it’s the fact that explains everything else about the way he is today.

He yearns to be babied and we give in to her desires without apology. He comes running when one of us enters the room. It’s his way of saying “Hi. Hold me please.”

For a while I caught myself wondering when that would stop. I wondered when he’d toughen up, settle in, and stop needing to be held as though he were something fragile.

The truth is, he is something fragile. This isn’t just a stage he’s going through. It’s just who he is in the same way that it might be true for a person who’s survived something a body doesn’t forget.

I stopped waiting for the version of Oreo who doesn’t need to be held and started cherishing the moments when I can hold him.

Phantom

And then there’s Phantom. He was found frozen in a truck engine one winter and then brought back to life with a hair dryer. Since then he’s also gone through a urinary blockage that should have been the second time he cheated death. By our count, he’s on life number seven of nine.

I don’t know how to turn Phantom’s journey into a triumphant story. It isn’t one. It’s just a fact about a cat who keeps cheating death and who has no idea any of this is remarkable. To him it’s just another day.

What These Cats All Share in Common

Special Little Whiskers Sanctuary doesn’t do adoptions. We specialize in cases like these. It’s just who we are. It’s just who these cats are.

This wasn’t a fact that was easy to arrive at. There was a time when I thought the point was to help these cats transform into someone who was easier to love. I somehow believed that cats like Spitz was “a work in progress.” My job here was to help her become a cat that someone would want.

I don’t think I was being cruel. To me it was quite common to think this way. In fact, it felt like the truth rather than a belief. To me a good outcome was adoption. Success was a friendly cat curled in someone’s lap in a photo with a caption that says she found her forever home. Anything short of that felt like something I hadn’t finished yet.

What if I stopped trying to turn every cat into the kind of cat people want?

My change in thought didn’t arrive all at once.

One day as I watched Spitz walk into her kennel I finally understood that she didn’t find her life sad, I did.

As I watched Gem have yet another bad week I realized that this didn’t have to mean anything. It was just life had handed her a bad card and she’d accepted before I could.

Then I paid more attention to how Oreo loved being carried around like a baby. It was then that I let go of the idea that this was a habit to break instead of a need to meet.

Even Phantom taught me something as I watched him live again. He taught me the very important lesson that life doesn’t depend on how many times you escape death. It’s about how well you live in the moment.

The Belief I Unfollowed

All of these cats and the lessons they taught me resulted in me unfollowing the belief that a good cat is an easy cat. I no longer believed that protection is something a cat has to earn back by loving me the right way and at the right time. Ultimately, I unfollowed the story where every difficult cat is a rough draft of a friendly one.

Nothing about these cats’ care changed when I did. The kennel is still there. The carrying still happens. The seventh life is still being lived carefully, one day at a time.

What changed was smaller than that and harder to photograph. I stopped needing these things to resolve in a way that others would find “presentable.”

The Lesson I Learned

I suddenly realized that freedom isn’t always about changing the cat. Sometimes it’s about changing me. It’s about freeing myself from expecting that the cat needs to change.

That’s not a lesson. It’s just where I landed. Spitz still won’t join general population. Gem’s stomach is still Gem’s stomach. Oreo still wants to be held like he might break, because once, he nearly did. And Phantom is still here, on life number seven, entirely unbothered by how special that is.

I stopped waiting for the version of them that would be easier to explain. These are the cats. This is the whole story.