They Said I Wouldn’t Love My Cats as Much After I Had My Baby
How my ‘fur babies’ have helped me navigate depression
I recently gave birth to my first child — a beautiful, healthy boy. It took many years and ups and downs for us to get here.
Only nine months after our first date, my now-husband moved to Dublin, Ireland, to take a job in the online gaming space. Being a newly-minted couple, neither of us entertained the notion of me moving with him. I stayed behind, continued to teach 7th grade language arts, and we maintained a long-distance relationship.
We survived nearly a year of video chats and expensive phone calls before I moved to Dublin to be with him. Life together in Europe would become one adventure after another. We loved our independent, travel-friendly existence. We hopped short flights to Paris or London. I did volunteer work, and we made many friends. When a better opportunity became available in Gibraltar, we settled there for some time, both working on the little peninsula and enjoying perfect weather on the Costa del Sol.
We hesitated to welcome pets into our home because of our busy lifestyle, until a tiny stray kitten with burned paws needed a place to land. When we moved back to the United States, he came with us—on the train to Madrid and then in the seat next to me…
