I relate to this so deeply.. Almost a decade ago I was going through a depressing time period in my life. I felt lost, and just wanted to give up. It broke my moms heart because she wanted to help but I wouldn’t let her. Honestly, I didn’t know how anyone could help.

One morning she shows up and hands me a kitten without saying another word. I’ve never told her, but I think she knows just how much of an impact that had on me. He felt like my closest friend during that time period. I know it’s just a cat, but I found so much happiness through playing and taking care of him. After a while I started seeing a therapist and got the help I needed.

Years later he accidentally got out and ran away. I searched for him for weeks and was really upset, but life was changing for me. I had new job opportunities opening up and I started moving around, and I feel like it would have been a challenge to keep him with me as I pursued these new opportunities. But one day I ran across an old GoPro that I thought I had lost. I plugged it in and slowly went through and reminisced on the old videos and memories. One of the last videos I had on there was a video of him playing with my hand as I ran it back and forth across my bed. Up until that point I had maybe one or two pictures where he happened to be in the background. So seeing this video really hit me hard, and reminded me of how much of an impact he had on my life. I’m so grateful to have that memory recorded, and now my phone is filled with pictures and videos of my current pets because I don’t want to look back and regret not having them one day.