Anxiety Has Nothing on My Cats

They say comparison is the thief of joy. While that’s true, I don’t think comparison has anything on anxiety when it comes to squeezing all the joy out of someone’s life. Just like the Dementors. If you don’t know what those are, it means you’re not familiar with the Harry Potter world. And before you roll your eyes when the writer’s name is mentioned, just remember, sometimes you’ve got to separate the work of art from the controversial political views of its creator. I disagree with some of her views, yes, but her work I still admire very much. All I’m saying is that if what you hear about her is the thing preventing you from reading her books, don’t do that to yourself.

Anyway, I digress. The Dementors in the Harry Potter world are dark creatures, prison guards of Azkaban, the notorious wizard prison. When they are assigned to get someone, the punishment is that they suck the livelihood out of that person until they become just a shell, a soulless being, if you will.

That’s what anxiety does to me. And it’s not always that drastic. Sometimes it’s like a continuous drip, drip, drip of something in the back of my head, like a leaking faucet that wakes you up in the middle of the night and doesn’t let you go back to sleep. Sometimes it’s like a mosquito buzzing in your ear just when you’ve opened the window on a hot summer night to enjoy the breeze and smell the summer air, but that relentless whiiizz won’t let you. Sometimes it’s like the feeling you have right before an important exam or a high-stakes interview, when there’s a flood of butterflies not just in your stomach but running through your whole system, and you’re whispering to some deity somewhere, please don’t let me pass out.

And then there are times when the Dementors come. Suddenly there’s a pitch-black cloud. It’s like a window cracked open in the middle of February, an icy wind surrounding you, and the darkest, nastiest thoughts engulf you. And most of the time, two villains are the stars of the the show: illness and death. Out of nowhere, you start thinking about all the potential losses you could face in life, some predictable, some not.

This week, it’s me and my kitties. You see, I wasn’t a pet person until five years ago. I liked animals and was always kind to them, but I never imagined actually living with one. One of the main reasons was that my mom is terrified of all living things, except for birds in cages and fish in tanks. Those were the only two types of animals that ever entered our household. If I had a cat or a dog in my house, my mom would never set foot in it.

But then circumstances changed, as in we now live across the world from each other, so five years ago I finally said, I want to try living with an animal. Lo and behold, now everywhere I look in my apartment, I see a cat. Don’t get too excited, we only have three. The apartment is not a penthouse.

So now these three beautiful, proud, and fluffy creatures, who only let me hug and kiss them when they feel like it, are inseparable from my life. I keep telling my husband, how did we even live without having a pet? How did we not realize what we were missing out on?

Do you see where I’m going with this? That nasty anxiety now knows I have something precious to lose. It’s been open season for the past couple of weeks. I keep thinking about losing these fur babies, not having them anymore, having to deal with their empty space in my life, and I just don’t know how to cope with it.

As I was writing this, one of them came and sat in my lap, as if she knows I was sad and wanted to say, hey, we’re still here. I know they are, but the Dementors have been closing in on me.

This afternoon, we found a bunch of cat stuff at our apartment door from an old lady who lives across the hall. From time to time she leaves cat treats and toys that her cat liked—or didn’t—for us, and sometimes we do the same. Today, the note said: “My cat is now in kitty heaven. I hope you can use these for your cats.” There it was, the reality my ugly anxiety had been trying to picture for me, brutal, and in plain sight.

I hid the stuff in the bathroom and will probably ask my husband to donate it to a shelter or something. I hugged all my kitties one by one, as if someone might take them away at any moment. I don’t know how I’ll cope with the sadness of that stage of my life when the time comes, but I know I don’t want to let anxiety win this round.

I don’t want to keep worrying about something I can’t control and let the Dementors suck all the joy out of looking at my beautiful kitties and enjoying their company while they’re here. I pray to God that when the day comes, I can remember how hard we tried to give them THE best life they could have hoped for, how selflessly we loved them, and how lucky we were to have them. I’m sending myself strength all the way to the future, hoping I’ll be strong enough to get through the sorrow.

But today, I’ll shut that window, put the kettle on, and make the house warm. Dementors can go fuck themselves.