All week, I have felt the pressure to write something Christmas-y for my last article of the year. However, that remains pretty tricky when it seems like every holiday article is a carbon copy of another. A listicle of Christmas movies, songs, TV show episodes, books, etc., etc. Take your pick, I’ve seen and edited them all. So, in the true spirit of the holidays, I’m going to tell a little story that has a lesson at the end, so stay tuned if you want to learn something.
Every single holiday for as long as I can remember, all I wanted was a dog. I pictured exactly how the scene would go down in my mind every year. Each Christmas morning, my sister and I would cling to the bars of the baby gate my parents put at the top of the stairs so we wouldn’t fall.
That’s how young we were, and that’s how long I’ve had this fantasy. That fantasy was running down the stairs to see a round, pink hatbox with a huge, red bow that was peculiarly puppy-sized, shifting and barking before my eyes. I’d open it up and, boom, perfect beagle puppy that was mine forever. If you’ve ever seen “Lady and the Tramp,” my favorite movie as a kid, it was basically just a shot-for-shot delusion of the opening scene.
Unfortunately, my friends, no amount of holiday magic was going to make my dream come true, and I will spend every Christmas morning with the same childlike hope and continue to have many, many arguments with my mother for being the biggest obstacle to my dream. She never wanted a dog and was much more stubborn than I was.
Then, the summer I turned eleven, the most bizarre thing happened.
It was September, and I was outside with some friends at my street’s block party when this cat approached our yard. Even though I was an aggressive dog person, I craved any presence of an animal in my life, so we welcomed her over. She had that typical tabby look about her, brown and white with a splash of black near her tail. We would later learn that her name was Peanut, she was already 13 years old and belonged to the neighbors across the street, who had no problem if she wanted to hang out with us.
So, throughout the fall, that’s exactly what Peanut did, routinely sprinting across the road at all hours of the day to come play with me and my sister. My memory gets a little hazy during the early winter era of this tale, but long story short, her owners across the street moved away.
We had known this was happening for a while, but what we did NOT know was that the night before they moved, they shut the garage door on Peanut and went wherever they ended up. Suddenly and heartlessly, they dumped their senior cat on my family, their unsuspecting neighbors who had never cared for as much as a goldfish.
They did not want her, and my sister and I were the only place she could get any attention, hence her determination to come over. Even though my parents did not plan on fully adopting a cat, they were not monsters, so Peanut became even more integrated into our home. Now that it was winter, the rule of “No Peanut in the house, play with her in the yard” was cruel, and we gave food like leftover chicken and anything else we had lying around that wouldn’t kill her.
Luckily, my parents got in contact with another neighbor who already owned a senior cat and would know just what Peanut needed in ways we did not. Saying goodbye to her was brutal, and my sister and I were in absolute hysterics, but the neighbors were very gentle to us and said we could visit whenever, but it sucked to have to give my first pet away after she’d already been abandoned.
Those neighbors would end up doing a great job, and I understand now why my parents gave her to them. They were completely blindsided by this whole thing, and Peanut’s age scared them. What if she had died in our care and mine and my sister’s first pet-owning experience ended in even more tragedy?
As sad as we were to close this chapter of pet parenthood, our journey was far from over. Peanut had shown my family, especially my father, who claimed to not like cats for so long, that we were finally ready for this. My dream was coming true, but not in the exact way I had always pictured it.
That entire month of December was spent in and out of local shelters, asking friends for advice and scouring the internet for available cats and instructions on how to care for them properly. Seeing as we had only gotten started early in December and we were fighting a billion other people who wanted a pet for Christmas, nobody thought we would end up with a cat before the new year. However, no part of this story is typical, and on Dec. 23, 2016, we found our fuzzy new family member.
Dixie was six months old, black and brown and white, with the most interesting swirly pattern on her back and had the loudest voice of any other kitten in the room. She was a perfect little weirdo and we weren’t leaving without her.
Now, here we are eight years later, and I wouldn’t trade Dixie or the wild story behind her adoption for anything in the world. I just wish I could go back and tell my little self that one day she would get a pet for Christmas, it would just be a cat with the extraverted personality of a dog instead of an actual dog. I also promised you a lesson, so here it is.
Holiday expectations are an absolute nightmare. From begging for a pet, a toy or a trip, it’s all madness. As a perfectionist 365 days a year, I tend to struggle with fitting the bill for the “perfect Christmas” and beating myself up for not pulling off a fairytale holiday. I can’t even count all the times I’ve driven myself crazy, letting expectations and stereotypes ruin my time with my loved ones because I just couldn’t ease up on my perfectionism.
The moral of the story is to remember to relax this season and keep in mind that the “perfect Christmas” doesn’t exist, and everyone’s version of perfect is different. Dedicate your time and your energy to whatever makes you happy, and try to block out the pressure to make every holiday a spectacle. If you open your mind and try not to give in to the pressures surrounding this time of year, you never know what could happen. Take it from me: You could end up with the perfect surprise and everything you never knew you needed.