Warning- This is a stupid post about my failures as a pet parent that has no real point. You will never get back the 5 min it will take to read this. Sorry. Please feel free to ignore. I think I just want to hear myself speak.

They say that people who grow up in a house with mental illness and addiction often end up with problems of their own bc of their environment. The whole nature/nurture thing. So, I think I made my cats crazy! I raised my pets and they caught a little of my mental illness.

My cats are my shadows, never out of sight or in a different room than me. On my lap in the recliner, on my pillow when I go to sleep. I have raised two very CODEPENDENT cats! Even as I write this the old man won't stop butting his head against me and forcing me to pet him! And he gets SEPARATION ANXIETY whenever I am gone too long or go away on vacation- he drags my clothes all over the house until I return.

The kitten is NEUROTIC. He loves to play fetch and retrieve stuff and run around like a lunatic. And I will find all sorts of cat toys and random household items that he carries in his mouth and deposits in my bed. I just took a bubble bath and the kitten sat on the ledge of the bathtub the whole time, keeping me company. He swatted at the bubbles, with his giant fluffy tail just sitting on top of the bubbles getting wet. Then he slipped and fell in, getting his back end all soaked. And he just came bAck for more. He will periodically ambush me and the old gray boy when we are walking around a corner.

So yeah, I think I might have messed up my cats a little bit. Maybe I just love too hard... On another note though, when I had sui ideation my cats were the only things that stopped me at times. That sounds terrible, that I didn't think of my family but couldn't bear to leave my cats. I just knew nobody else would love them as much as me. And I didn't want them to have to eat my face off in case nobody noticed I was gone for a while.

I want to get a dog in the next year or two. I love the idea of having a dog- somebody to greet me at the door, a travel buddy who I can drive places with, go hiking with, go for car rides with me singing to the radio and him flapping his ears in the wind out the open window. Getting him bandanas for each holiday. I can see how happy Rover and I could be.

But all i have ever had is cats. I don't know if I am really dog-like in personality. They are very high maintenance. They bark and drool and want to kiss on the lips. Dogs require you to leave the house, go on early am walks in the cold, force you to interact with other dog people on the street. I fear I will end up raising a defective outcast doggie. The neighbors will point and laugh at us when I walk him and whisper about how misbehaved he is. None of the people at the dog park will let us play their reindeer games. He will end up with a complex. Sigh.