Wake-Up Calls
Every morning around 4 a.m., I wake to a loud crash and the sound of little claws skittering across my glass desk. I make eye contact with my foot-long orange menace to society as he pushes all my belongings onto the floor while staring directly into my eyes. This continues until I drag myself out of bed to fill his bowl, which he eats from for about 30 seconds before curling back up next to me in bed.
For a large part of my junior year of college, I was, for lack of a better term, miserable. I spent every second I was at home sleeping. I went weeks without cooking a meal. I’d go to work only to come home and cry for a few hours until I eventually fell asleep again. I was on track to graduate with a degree I didn’t want, working a job I hated. I wished I was anywhere else but where I’d decided to be.
However, there was one bright light in those darker days: my roommate’s cat, Theodore. He was a sweet orange boy with white stripes and the biggest black eyes you’d ever seen. He would come meow at me when I got home and curl up next to me in bed every night. Whenever I looked at him, I couldn’t help but smile. I knew he wasn’t mine, and the thought of us separating at the end of the year was devastating, so I tried my best to enjoy the time I had with him.
I would spend hours sitting in bed, my iPad propped up with a movie or a lecture I couldn’t bring myself to attend in person, and Theo would sit with me. He would gnaw on the corner of my iPad or attack the yarn I used for crocheting. Even with teeth marks in my screen protector and drool all over my half-finished blankets, I could never be upset. I could only ever feel happy that he was with me, that he chose to sit next to me, and that somehow meant something.
One day, I got a text from my roommate saying she was taking him back to the shelter. Before I could even think about it, I was offering to take him.
Making room
I signed a handwritten contract and stayed up until midnight, moving all of his things into my room. The next day, I cleaned my room from top to bottom. I packed bags of things to donate and got rid of everything I didn’t need. I made space so my life had a little more room for someone else.
Suddenly, I hated everything about my life except for this little orange creature who was now mine. Immediately, it was like a switch flipped in my head. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher. In fact, I had known for a while, but after two years, it felt too late to change it. Teaching was expected of me, so I decided to pursue a degree in it, to have one. But then it suddenly didn’t seem fair to spend time doing something I hated when there was someone else I was responsible for. I couldn’t work a job that capped me at 15 hours a week when I had another living creature to support. So I changed everything.
I changed my major a week before the semester started and registered for an entirely new set of classes. I quit my job and found a new one. Then I spent my free time spoiling my cat absolutely rotten.
The life I didn’t want
It sounds silly, but this little orange guy completely changed my life. What I didn’t realize at the time was that Theo wasn’t just changing my daily routine—he was changing the way I thought about my life and the future I wanted to build. We aren’t meant to exist entirely on our own. Theo taught me that sometimes the presence of another living soul is enough to shift everything.
Support isn’t always about being directly cared for. Sometimes it’s about finding something that inspires you to change—a reason to get out of bed every day, even if it’s to keep your cat from destroying your belongings. It’s about finding something that pushes you to quit the job that makes you miserable. What causes you to rethink your future so you can make more space for what makes you happy.
My life completely changed because I found something that made me want to do better for myself. I found something to smile about.
The people who stayed
College is this strange in-between space where you aren’t surrounded by the people you’ve known your whole life, but there’s still uncertainty about the new people around you. My ideal night is sitting at home doing a puzzle. So it’s safe to say I didn’t get out much my first few years. As a result, I didn’t have many friends. The ones I did have always left me feeling that we wouldn’t be friends if we weren’t in proximity all the time.
All that is to say that this amazing support system surrounded me—I just had a hard time recognizing it.
There’s a common phrase that says you can’t help others until you help yourself. To add to that, I think you can’t fully appreciate others until you can appreciate yourself. Recognizing my life both for what it was and for what I wanted it to be allowed me to realize that I already had a support system in place. I just hadn’t seen it before.
I went out of town for almost a month shortly after I got Theo, and without a second thought, my best friend agreed to watch him. She learned his routines the same way I had. She even slept in my room so he wouldn’t have to sleep alone. When she wasn’t available, I had multiple other people who were willing to spend time with him, doing nothing more than sitting with him for a few hours. I realized then that these were the right people. The kind of people who would take time out of their lives to care for something important to me, to support both of us.
Alone Vs. independent
It’s been almost two years since my “quarter-life crisis”, and I can honestly say that I’m genuinely happy with my life. I still have many of the same friends, but now I put time and energy into maintaining those relationships. I still love spending my evenings at home with a puzzle. However, now it’s much more likely that you’ll find someone sitting next to me doing the same thing. More often than not, there’s also an orange fur-ball curled up in the window.
The idea of college independence is deeply ingrained in our society, but independent doesn’t necessarily mean alone. It means choosing for yourself the people you want to surround yourself with. Finding the people you’ll call first when you’re sad, the people who will stand beside you through life’s big moments. The people who are willing to sit in silence and do a puzzle simply because it makes you happy.
A softer landing
My life would look very different if Theo hadn’t wandered into it, and I feel lucky to take care of him every day. As I write this, he’s currently curled up on a chair beside me, purring quietly while he sleeps. He looks like a cartoon when he dreams, and just like when we first met, I can’t help but smile when I look at him.
I watch him breathe for a little while, and I realize once again that he’s a living creature—a living creature who trusts me enough to fall asleep next to me every day. And if this little guy can trust me, maybe it’s okay to trust myself: trust my decisions, trust my goals, and trust the people I’ve chosen to surround myself with.
Now, as Theo launches a pen off my desk at four in the morning, I’m still annoyed. But there’s something comforting about it too. Two years ago, I didn’t know what I wanted my life to look like. Now I wake up in an apartment that feels like home, work toward goals I actually chose for myself, and share my space with the little orange cat who accidentally started it all. It turns out that even a stubborn, food-demanding, 4 a.m. alarm clock can make the world feel a little softer. Maybe support doesn’t always look like comfort. Sometimes it just looks like a cat reminding you to show up.
