Whilst my addition to this post isn't a story about someone struggling with addiction giving themselves grace and a reason to change their lives for the sake of an innocent thing, I do think sharing what my mother did is a good idea. My mother's story is more centred on her mental health and journey to try and be less of the woman I grew up with so that she could be better than she was before.
The woman I grew up with was always angry, reactive, and—honestly—scared. She saw danger everywhere, could never perceive anyone who wasn't openly happy as anything but hostile. I grew up learning to manage her anger and burying my own. But when I was in my early 20s, something happened that, honestly, did more to change her than anything else had before.
My mother ended up with a cat. A kitten, actually, and it altered something in her brain chemistry in an irrevocable way.
My mother's cat, Mason, was originally the cat of a 'family friend', who we'll call Debbie, who was high af all the time, lost her kids bc Debbie valued drugs more, and was locking Mason in a small room in high temps with no water and feeding him dog meat when he was still young enough that he shouldn't have been away from his mother.
My mother, when she saw him, told Debbie to give him to her and Debbie refused. Said it was her cat, she could care for it, blah blah blah and my mother could "fuck off" basically.
Except, my mother wasn't asking.
She pinned Debbie to the wall by her throat and very calmly informed her that she'd be taking the kitten no matter what and it didn't matter to my mother if Debbie was breathing or not when she left with Mason.
Debbie did not argue and my mother left with the kitten. She called me and told me to meet her with the small dog cage we had and told me what happened.
Mason wasn't as bad as he could have been, but he suffered long-term damage to his digestion thanks to Debbie feeding him dog meat (not even puppy meat! Just regular crappy, cheap, tinned dog meat in gravy ffs!) for the two-three weeks she'd had him and he was... If I remember correctly, he was about six-seven weeks old at most.
FYI: kittens typically start being weaned off their mother's milk after about four weeks and it takes about a month for them to near fully transition to solid food.
Mason was weaned a week earlier than he should have been, at minimum, by the guy who basically used Mason's mother as a little breeding bank machine.
(who, unfortunately, I knew bc he's a 'friend' of my older brother: the dude is a dick and I hate him thanks)
So, Mason, weaned a week or so too soon, sold for money (or drugs, I really don't know for sure but considering the people involved it wouldn't surprise me sadly) to a woman with no fuckin clue how to raise a baby anything, locked in a hot room, no access to water, fed dog meat only when Debbie fuckin bothered to remember to feed him (gods I hate that woman so fuckin much), and even the vet we took him to was surprised that Mason didn't have worse problems than the usual (fleas, worms) and the digestive issue.
Ten years later, and Mason is a big, cheeky boy with a mischief streak a mile or three wide. He's always struggled to eat regular cat food—it being hit-or-miss with cat biscuits/kibble and a major no-go with cat meat/wet food—but he's grown big and strong on a mixed diet of cat treats, boiled meat like chicken, and dedicated effort by my mother and I to slowly getting his system to handle specific types of cat biscuits/kibble.
And here he is, a happy, relaxed baby who screams at you for attention, climbs on the roof via my window when he feels like it, cannot be trusted to not make a mess around water, and so, so affectionate that my mother has never once regretted taking him from Debbie.
My mother has changed parts of her entire life to better accommodate, Mason, doing things I never thought she would so that she'd be there for him and live up to the responsibility that raising a small, precious, innocent thing places upon you.
I do wish he wouldn't climb up on to the roof via my window at silly o'clock in the morning tho and ignore me begging him to come back inside. That I could do without!
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