ANDRE BEGIN

Back in 2015, I started visiting local pet stores checking out some of the rescue cats from the Ottawa Humane Society.

When I wondered to myself “Why now?” I think the answer came from a place of kindness, with an open heart and an open mind.

I would not say I had been “guilted” into the idea of getting a pet. However, whenever the media cast a spotlight on unfortunate cases where animals were not given the necessities of life, or about how many strays resided in shelters, I thought to myself that my home would be a fantastic “fur-ever” home to a rescue cat.

That feeling was getting progressively stronger.

Throughout the years, while observing my animal-lover friends and their interactions with their pets, I noticed that pets were a constant reminder about living in the moment. Maybe that’s what I was searching for.

We all work so hard and sometimes needlessly carry the weight of the world on our shoulders even after the clock strikes 5:00. Pets can bring us back to earth and help us to quickly cross over from work day to home life. There is nothing like having a pet running to the front door for an enthusiastic welcome home greeting to make you forget about the workplace.

Much like anything in life, I took the prospect very seriously and had been thinking about it… a lot… as I wanted to be absolutely sure that a pet would be happy and thriving with me. Along with the pet store visits went a lot of research on the web and chats with my cat owner friends.

My poor friends and partner… they must have gotten getting sick of me turning every conversation into a chat about cat care.

I suppose it is natural for a planner, a list keeper and someone with a big heart to make this decision thoughtfully, but there came a point at which becoming a new daddy to a cat became overplanned parenthood.

I was so lucky to be surrounded by such great friends, with the wisdom and experience to impart and to help make this a happy home for both, cat and human.

In my research, I pored over so many online cat profiles, there came a point where I was wondering if I was looking for a cat or a date.

Yet throughout my research through cat care resources I often stumbled upon the phrase, “you don’t pick a cat, the cat picks you”. Visits to the pet stores (the temporary homes of rescue cats on behalf of the Ottawa Humane Society) seemed to support that perspective as some cats were considerably easy to bond with while others seemed quite disinterested in me.

We cannot get too caught up in the rejection. If a cat doesn’t bond with you, you don’t take it personally and you move on.

Even though that is often the M.O. of cats, I certainly didn’t want to walk away from the experience with a 20 year commitment to a cat that hated me. The hunt for the right cat continued.

As I persistently perused the profiles and dropped by several stores to check out the prospects, there were a few cats that I started to refer to as the front runners who seemed to bond well with me.

But with such different personality traits, how does one choose?

I was very grateful to have found Pamela Merritt’s “Way of Cats” blog and her posts about “Cat Types”.

For a novice like me, this was a valuable resource to understand why I gravitated to certain cats as opposed to others, and to gain better insight into what I was looking for and why.

Pamela’s article helped me to validate the choices I was making intuitively and helped to steer me in the right direction.

Days later, I knew that Ivy was the one and she became my new roommate.

In retrospect, I think there can be a natural order to the things we choose to do in life. As much as I enjoyed the company of cats my entire life (as a guest), I probably would not have been as well prepared to host a home for a cat earlier in life as I am now, nor would I have had the self-awareness to fully appreciate what we could offer each other.

Eight years later, I have absolutely no regrets and know for a fact that both Ivy and I chose well!

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André