Maybe This Is My Therapy

People ask me more often than you might think if I have a therapist.

Usually, it comes after I've told them about something particularly awful. A kitten we couldn't save. An animal that came to us too late. A case that kept me awake for days. A person who said something cruel. Another emergency added to a list that was already too long.

"Do you have someone you talk to about all of this?"

"Do you ever go to therapy?"

"What do you do for yourself?"

The answer is usually the same.

No.

And if I'm being completely transparent, even the idea of therapy stresses me out a little.

Not because I think there's anything wrong with therapy. I don't.

It's because I can picture myself sitting in that chair, looking at the clock, thinking about everything I could be doing instead.

There's an animal that needs medication.

There's a foster who needs an answer.

There's an application I haven't gotten to.

There's a kitten that needs to eat.

There's an organization that needs money.

There's always something.

So sitting in a room for an hour talking about how overwhelmed I am because I don't have enough hours feels a little ironic.

Maybe that's unhealthy.

Maybe someday I'll figure out a better balance.

But right now, I think this is part of my therapy.

---

Another request came in recently.

Tiny kittens. Fragile kittens.

The kind that don't just need a place to sleep and a bowl of food.

They need someone willing to rearrange their entire life around keeping a few ounces of life alive.

Around-the-clock feedings.

Warmth.

Monitoring.

Cleaning.

Constant attention.

Very little sleep.

And the understanding that you can do absolutely everything right and still lose them.

Someone had found them and reached out for rescue.

We didn't have an immediate opening.

That happens far more often than people realize.

Rescues don't have a secret room full of empty cages and rested foster parents waiting for the next emergency. We don't have an endless bank account tucked away somewhere. Every "yes" requires something.

Space.

Money.

Time.

A foster.

Supplies.

Medical care.

And sometimes a person willing to sacrifice sleep for the foreseeable future.

So we started working on it.

We reached out.

We moved things around.

We considered the animals already depending on us and tried to figure out how to make room for a few more.

And we found it. We found a foster.

Someone agreed to open their home, change their schedule, lose some sleep and take responsibility for these tiny lives they had never even met.

We prioritized these kittens because they seemed to need us the most.

We were ready.

And then we found out they died.

They hadn't made it long enough to get to us.

I can't adequately explain what receiving a message like that does to someone in rescue.

Because technically, they weren't ours.

We had never held them. We had never fed them. They didn't have names written on our paperwork.

But we had already made room for them.

A foster had mentally prepared for their arrival.

We had spent time figuring out how to save them.

We had pictured them coming through the door.

In some strange way that only people who do this work will probably understand, we had already started loving animals we had never met.

And suddenly, they weren't coming.

---

This is where my frustration comes in.

Apparently, this is today's therapy session.

Finding an animal is not the same thing as rescuing an animal.

Finding is the moment you discover that something needs help.

Rescue is everything that happens afterward.

Picking up a kitten doesn't finish the rescue.

Putting it in a box doesn't finish the rescue.

Posting it online doesn't finish the rescue.

Messaging every organization you can find doesn't finish the rescue.

Those things can begin a rescue.

But there is a period between "I found this animal" and "someone qualified has taken over its care."

And during that time, you are the rescue.

You may not want to be.

You may not know what you're doing.

You may be scared to death that you'll do something wrong.

I understand all of that.

But the animal doesn't know that.

All that tiny creature knows is that whatever was happening before has changed because a human intervened.

And now its life is in that human's hands.

We live in a time when information is available almost instantly. You can research how to keep a neonatal kitten warm. You can learn feeding basics. You can call a veterinary clinic. You can ask questions. You can search for reputable neonatal care resources while you continue looking for experienced placement.

You don't have to become an expert overnight.

You just have to be willing to try.

Sometimes the only thing separating a dying animal from an experienced rescuer is a few hours.

Your job may simply be to keep that animal alive long enough for the next person to take over.

And that matters.

---

Sometimes after an animal dies, we hear:

"I guess nature took its course."

That sentence is difficult for me.

Because nature taking its course would have been leaving the animal exactly where nature put it and never intervening.

Once we pick something up, bring it inside, put it in a carrier and decide we're going to help it, we've changed the course.

We've made ourselves part of what happens next.

That doesn't mean every animal can be saved.

God, I wish it did.

People in rescue know better than almost anyone that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.

We've stayed awake.

We've tube-fed.

We've given medications.

We've rushed to emergency care.

We've spent money we didn't have.

We've begged tiny bodies to keep fighting.

We've held them against our chests and felt their hearts stop anyway.

Sometimes we lose.

But there is a difference between losing a life after fighting with everything you have and losing a life while waiting for somebody else to start fighting.

---

There's another part of this that people outside rescue don't always see.

When you contact a rescue and we say we don't have immediate space, we're not rejecting the animal.

We're trying not to fail the ones we already promised to save.

There may already be dozens, or hundreds, of lives connected to the decisions we're making that day.

There are animals in foster homes.

Animals needing medication.

Animals scheduled for surgery.

Animals needing placement.

Animals whose food, litter and veterinary bills have to be paid.

And behind every one of those animals is a person.

A tired person.

A person with a family.

A person with bills.

A person who probably hasn't slept enough.

A person whose heart has already been broken several times this month.

So when someone tells us:

"They died because you wouldn't take them."

It doesn't simply roll off our backs.

It lands.

We wonder if we should have moved faster.

We wonder if we could have squeezed one more somewhere.

We wonder who else we could have called.

We wonder whether we failed an animal we never even met.

And meanwhile, the foster who made room is hurting too.

They were expecting those kittens.

They had already pictured the bottles and the sleepless nights and the tiny bodies curled up together.

They had opened their home before the animals ever arrived.

Then they learned there was nobody coming.

People don't see that part.

They don't see how many strangers can quietly grieve an animal that technically never belonged to any of them.

But we do.

And then the next message comes in.

And we answer it.

---

Which brings me back to therapy.

Maybe people are right.

Maybe I should sit in a room once a week and unpack why I feel personally responsible for creatures I've never met.

Why an email telling me an animal died can ruin my entire day.

Why I can remember animals from years ago that I couldn't save.

Why I'll give up sleep without thinking twice but feel guilty giving myself an hour.

There's probably plenty to unpack there.

But I also know myself.

If I were sitting in that room while knowing there was something I could be doing to give another living thing a chance, I'd probably spend the entire hour thinking about that instead.

Because somewhere along the way, helping became part of how I heal.

A kitten surviving is therapy.

Watching an animal we nearly lost grow up is therapy.

Seeing an adoption photo months later is therapy.

Watching someone fall hopelessly in love with an animal whose future was once measured in hours is therapy.

Knowing that somewhere there is a family I will never meet whose life is different because one day we said, "Okay. We'll figure it out," is therapy.

And maybe writing this is therapy too.

Maybe putting the weight down on paper for a few minutes means I don't have to carry all of it quite so tightly.

Maybe someone will read this and understand rescue a little differently.

Maybe the next person who finds a kitten won't spend three hours waiting for a rescue to answer before doing anything.

Maybe they'll Google what to do.

Maybe they'll make the formula.

Maybe they'll warm the kitten.

Maybe they'll make the phone calls while still caring for the life in front of them.

Maybe they'll realize:

I don't have to know how to save this animal forever. I just have to keep trying until someone who knows more can help me.

And maybe one animal lives because of it.

If that happens, then this hour wasn't spent sitting still.

It did something.

It mattered.

And I suppose that's the thing people don't always understand when they ask me what I do with everything I carry.

I carry it into the next animal.

The next foster.

The next family.

The next lesson.

The next life we somehow manage to save.

I turn grief into trying harder.

I turn frustration into education.

I turn heartbreak into another reason to answer the next message.

And tonight, I turned it into words.

So maybe I do have therapy.

Maybe you're reading it.