Missing My Emotional Support Animal (My Cat)

I was gone for over a week seeing my family for the holidays, and that means I had to leave my cat, who is my emotional support animal. I had never left him alone for that long before, and even though I have a cat-sitter who I trust unconditionally, it’s always hard to leave him. Being away from my emotional support cat makes me anxious, and though there’s no way I can know for sure what he’s thinking, I’m sure it makes him anxious too.

Thinking About What My Emotional Support Cat Does When I’m Gone

I always wonder what my cat does when I’m away. I usually spend a lot of time with him, so I wonder if he feels confused when things aren’t normal. I know cats generally like routines, so maybe he does his best to try and feel as normal as he can. He tends to sleep a lot, so I like to imagine he spends even more time sleeping just to make the time pass. Or maybe he doesn’t even experience time in the same way that I do.

Either way, I try to set up his environment so that it’s as close as it can be to when I’m actually at home. My cat-sitter comes at around the same times as when I usually feed him. I know I would be disturbed if my routine had to change so significantly, so I try to do my best to avoid him feeling like that because I know he would appreciate it.

What I Do When I’m Not with My Cat

It’s harder for me to make those sorts of adjustments because there’s no way I can have the one thing that would take away my worry: namely being with my cat. That being the case, I do have a few things I can do to help make the separation anxiety a little easier to deal with. I always have a number of pictures of him on my phone that I can look at, and I always feel happier when I do.

That doesn’t always help completely, though. Most of what I have to do is to remind myself that even though I can’t be there to see it, he is okay. He is always well taken care of, and when I come back, he is always happy to see me. When I came back this last time, he rubbed and purred for almost 20 minutes straight.

I’ll always have to have time when I’m away from him. I can never change that. But it’s comforting knowing that it’s not permanent, and in a short time, it’ll change, and I’ll be with him again.