“Even the smallest ones can change the world”
-
Peter Rabbit

This post wasn’t just inspired by the collaboration though; recently, a friend has had to make the all too familiar decision to have her cat put to sleep and it has inevitably triggered memories of losing my four-year-old cat Dolly last October. Luckily, my mental health is at the point where I can cope with these memories but another helpful aspect in coping with the triggers is having Emmy. Even though I still had Pixie, the house wasn’t a home without a cat in it. And having been raised with a cat, Pixie was lonely and constantly wanting attention and cuddles – which was sweet but also sad; so I visited Willows Cat Adoption Centre a week after Dolly was put to sleep and adopted Emmy – a rescue kitten (known as Jennifer at the Centre) who had been found wandering the streets at only a few weeks old. And now, almost a year later, I took this collaboration as an opportunity to look back on the past ten or so months with Emmy and think about all the positives that have come from adopting her…

The importance of responsibility has been a huge lesson learnt in recent months. For so long, my mental health left me wondering if I’d ever have children because I thought that if I couldn’t take care of myself then how could I possibly take care of anyone else?! So, going into recovery, it almost felt like I deserved to have pets; as though because I’d worked my butt off in trauma therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy sessions, I deserved the happiness and positivity that having a pet can bring. I deserved the love and affection. The fun and the responsibility. The dedication and the company. Taking responsibility for another life/lives was initially very daunting but now? It’s a motivation; knowing that I have someone else to look after can be a great help in fighting self-harm urges and suicidal thoughts. This was hard at first because I thought that I was a terrible person for being affected by the thought of leaving my pets behind more so than the thought of leaving my family and friends but I realized that the difference is; Emmy and Pixie rely on me in a very specific, and different way.

I honestly felt that I wouldn’t believe that Dolly was really gone while the hole remained in our family; and whilst Emmy obviously doesn’t fill that Dolly-shaped-hole, she keeps it from gaping wide open and allowing things to fall through it. Ironically, while Emmy helped me to accept Dolly’s death, she also helped me to then cope with it. Having Emmy meant that I had both a distraction and a new responsibility. I think that her being my first rescue pet helped too because knowing her difficult upbringing (she was found wandering the streets at only a few weeks old) gave me more motivation to provide her with the life that she – and all animals – deserve; a life filled with safety, happiness, and love. Coping with the loss of Dolly filled me with a strength I hadn’t known for a long time; it showed me that even when one of the worst things could happen, I would survive it.
https://www.instagram.com/bandana.bowtique/
Discount code: IMNOTDISORDERED
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/BandanaBowtiqueUK