Bringing home [fur]baby

I remember it like it was yesterday. I had begged and pleaded with Chris for an entire month. The little white puffball in the cage had met us at the window every Saturday since we first laid eyes on him. He was perfect. Two different colored eyes (one blue, one brown), the cutest face, and a black stripe down his furry head that made him look like he had a mohawk. I so desperately wanted to save him from his cramped cage and the loud, aggressive barking from the dogs surrounding him.

I finally convinced Chris to go inside just so we could hold him. The woman grabbed the tiny kitten by the scruff of his neck and thrust him into Chris’ arms. After using our limited Korean to translate the adoption price, 15,000 won or roughly fifteen U.S. dollars, we decided to bring him home. I chose a bag of food and a litter box and went to pay. Our total was over 150,000 won. One hundred and fifty dollars was way too much. We had mistranslated the initial cost and I wasn’t prepared to drop that much money from our first real paycheck in South Korea. I told Chris that we had to put him back.

“What? No. We can’t just leave him.” Chris was defiant and he protectively held his arm over the tiny ball of fur. Needless to say, we soon found ourselves short one hundred and fifty dollars and in a taxi that was bound for home, Chris cuddling our new baby the whole way back. It was on this fifteen minute back drive to our apartment that I had a silent freak out. What had we just done? We were now in charge of a life. It was our responsibility to keep this new addition alive and happy. The anxiety was only getting worse the closer we got to our apartment.

What is he going to do when we’re at work during the day? Will he like us? What happens when we return back to the States? Do we bring this little cat with us?

I briefly thought about taking him back. Having a pet meant that we would have to find someone to watch him if we wanted to go on vacation or take weekend trips. Our lives were immediately altered and I didn’t have the time to process the shift. Looking back, my anxiety seems so ridiculous. He was just a kitten after all. I think the hardest realization was that I couldn’t be as selfish as before. I now had to think about our little Ares.

If any of you follow us on instagram or have seen our facebook albums, you already know how this story ends. We are those people. The ones that are constantly posting pictures of their fur-baby. We (er, Chris) ended up bringing Ares back from Korea, which is a story in and of itself (we’re talking a long bus ride and two long and stressful plane rides). There was no way in hell we were leaving him. He’s one of the most well traveled cats that we know. He makes our lives so exciting and we often wonder what we did before we had this awesome ball of fur in our lives. Did I mention that he knows how to play tag? Cause he does- with a little tag of the paw and everything.

So you might be wondering why, after almost 5 years, I am only now talking about the day we brought home our Ares. Well, it’s because Chris and I recently made a big decision that almost immediately left me with the same (but intensified) anxiety that I had when we picked up Ares. I stood in shock as my brain tried to process all of the consequences that might come from our decision. How were we going to make it work? What would become of our lives and our business? Can we get a take back? I’m talking about our decision to finally-after three years on the road-get our very own apartment.

So as I process our big move, I think back to how everything worked out with Ares and find comfort. We are constantly taking big leaps and have found that we never fall too far. We have another post in the shoot that documents our decision to secure a “home base” and what that means for us and the blog (spoiler alert: not much). We are stoked to have you along for this crazy ride.

What’s a big leap that you have taken? We would love to hear it in the comment section below.