Becoming a cat lady

I've always loved cats so this is no news really, it's just that I've taken my cat-lover weirdness to a new level. The mixture of being the foreigner that no one fully gets, the fact that life in Martinique is depressing and lonely after just a couple of weeks, the fact that people here are weird and stress me out has led to a profound relationship built on trust and care with my cat. No one else here could provide that. People here are just weird. Consequently I enjoy providing food and safety for them, I panicked when I was spending nights over at my boyfriend's thinking they wouldn't understand why I wasn't there and would be hungry. Worse, if I stayed away for too long and left them under too much stress in the care of my horrible housemates they would up and leave. When did I become so protective of my cats? It seems normal to me that cats are for cuddling and not to be used to throw things at or torment, but I have come across a high concentration of people here who don't share this philosophy towards cats. My first house share in Martinique, I lived with boys who were mean to our cat which consequently became MY cat, then I lived with retarded medical students who were emotionally backward, emotionally dead to the world moreover, who were also mean to my cat, they threw her in the pool. During this traumatic time (for both me and my cat) there appeared a small black kitten in the garden and I took pity on him and adopted him. Coinciding with all this my nomadic lifestyle started to feel the weight of cat owning responsibility, the lack of flexibility that cat owning placed on my usual very flexible day to day existence has felt somewhat debilitating for someone who is so used to spontenaity and looking out for only herself. From now on until these cats pass on, they will always be put first, so my idea of hitch-hiking to South America by boat to go and work in Colombia will have to be re-adapted and planned out in a cat-friendly way. The stress of cat owning and the quasi-maternal instinct that this taps into is frightening. I am that crazy cat lady that has replaced children with cats, the solution, have children? Not ready for that yet. Given the fact that I'm in my twenties and not my fifties, I hope there is still time and that actually my cat-care is a good sign for the future rather than a sign I'll soon be cast adrift by society and consigned to the strange fate of being a crazy cat lady. There is still the fear that, in spite of everything my early cat-lady tendencies will frighten men away and there will be no saving me from co-habiting with multiple cats. No one understands or wants to understand a crazy cat lady. But maybe this isn't so bad, cat ladies themselves seem happy so long as the cat population in their homes isn't ridiculous. They have decided that humans are too complicated and weird and that our feline friends make for much better company. My experience of house sharing with medical students is proof that cat ladies are right on this score.

So imagine how my cat-lady heart has broken when my first cat disappeared over a month ago. No trace. Seemingly not squashed, I think that she has been stolen because she's beautiful. It's heart-breaking for me not being able to find her, wondering how she's being treated or is she's lost and hungry somewhere. Torture. I hope I find her, because it really does feel like I've lost a child. The worst thing is that she went missing one week before I stopped working my shitty bar job and started getting ready to leave Martinique. This horrible event could have been prevented if I had already finished working! Or may have never occured. Arrgghh, why is life so shit sometimes? Why?! And yes, I'm soon to be leaving Martinique, without her, and without knowing what has happened to her or where she is. Cat lady depression.