My Cat Saved Me When I Couldn't Go Home: How Living With My Beloved Cat Changed My Perspective on Going Home

My beloved cat is waiting for me at home. I think that is the most powerful reason for a cat owner to return home. My family home, where I was born and raised, was quite intense, and I used to feel pain in the act of "returning home" from being out.

But since I started living with my cats and had someone waiting for me, the agony of choosing to "go home" has diminished drastically.

My adolescence, when my only means of transportation was "being picked up by Mom"

I was born and raised in a deep countryside where you couldn't go anywhere without a car. Everyone around me got around by bicycle until they were old enough to drive. However, born with a heart condition, I would get out of breath easily and couldn't ride a bike, so my days were spent having my parents drive me even to school.

I am certainly grateful to my mother, who didn't work in an era without remote work and dedicated herself to picking me up and dropping me off. But as I grew older, the suffocation of not being able to go anywhere without my mother's intervention kept building up.

When you're a student, events like "going to a fireworks festival with a boy you like, without your parents knowing" happen, right? Even an introvert like me occasionally had the good fortune to experience such events.

However, in my case, I couldn't reach the fireworks venue without my parents' permission in the first place. Since it took 15 minutes by car just to get from my house to the station, relying on public transportation was difficult.

It would have been easier if I could have just told my parents, "There's someone I like and I want to go to the fireworks festival with them..." My mother was the type to loathe her daughter's romantic involvements. The moment a boy's name came up, her expression would harden, and sometimes she wouldn't drive me, claiming it was "because you're precious to me."

For me, in the midst of adolescence, having my movement and social life restricted was a major issue. Even if I rebelled against my mother, I ultimately had no means of transport other than her car, so I came up with ways to get her to drive me without upsetting her.

I started to get my way by mentioning the names of friends and weaving stories about fictional friends I had created in my head to tell my mother.

Trauma from my student days made "returning home after going out" scary

But you know, lies told by high schoolers always get found out. One day, I lied that I was "having a sleepover with friends" and had my first sleepover with my boyfriend. However, I made a careless mistake answering a question my mother asked in the car on the way back, and my lie was exposed.

After that, I spent my days with my emails being checked by my mother, unable to easily leave the house. I was literally a bird in a cage.

Perhaps because of those wounds from my school days, even after I got my own car, I started feeling uneasy when returning home from an outing. Even though I now had a way to get around and could leave whenever I wanted, the anxiety would well up that if I returned home, I wouldn't be able to leave again.

When I lived at my parents' house, even though I had a car, the time limit for being out was 7 PM. My father, who insisted that everyone in the family must do as he did, would get grumpy if the family wasn't all present at dinnertime.

At those times, my mother, exhausted by my father's roaring, would call me to "come home," and I would force myself back while still feeling that unease.

Welcoming a cat eased my fear of "going home"

After I married and left home, my life began with "not being managed by anyone" for the first time. The feeling that no one would get angry even if I stayed out until night was strange yet happy, and I started going out at night more often on purpose.

Even so, my heart would still feel uneasy when it was time to go home. I wouldn't feel like I could go home, so I started killing time in the parking lots of supermarkets and convenience stores.

It was my beloved cats who eased that difficulty of living. Cats do things at their own pace, so I figured they wouldn't be lonely even if I weren't there. If anything, they might be more comfortable on their own. I thought that when I first welcomed them, but that thought changed completely as we lived together.

When I came home from work, my cat would come running and rub against my feet. As if to fill in the time we weren't together, they would keep cuddling up to me.

Seeing that behavior made me happy to think, "There is someone who wants me, even someone like me," and I started to think, "I should go home early so this little one can spend their time feeling happy."

At first, it was sometimes hard to go home without stopping at a convenience store to kill time for ten minutes or so to steer my heart in the direction of "let's go home," but I stopped pointlessly dragging out my time before returning home.

Saying "I'm home" to a space with no humans

When I first welcomed my cat Gigi, I was working part-time. I got home earlier than my husband, so I wouldn't say "I'm home" when I returned. But as I spent time with Gigi, who looked forward to my return, the feeling "I want to say I'm home to this little one" naturally welled up inside me.

Saying "I'm home" to a space where no other human is present was a first in my life. It felt strange at first, but seeing Gigi come running in response to my voice, I thought, "I'm glad I started saying it."

Even now, more than 10 years later, I still say "I'm home" to my cats. Since I started working as a writer, I don't go out much to begin with, but when I come back from shopping or similar, I say "I'm home" quite naturally. Sometimes I'm surprised by my own change, thinking, "I've really changed."

My beloved cats are waiting, so I have to go home. I love those moments when I'm prompted to return home by that pleasant urgency. Being able to love "the time I spend in my own home" is entirely thanks to the presence of my beloved cats.

Every time I see my cats running toward me as I come home, crying out with vibrant voices, I feel a "family love" that simply didn't exist in the home where I was raised.

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