After the shattering events of late 2024, life took another rhythm for me. Losing my cat and my job in a space of a month put me in limbo and for a few weeks I felt empty and aimless.

Experiencing grief in the middle of the brutal Winter we’re having here in Toronto was weighing on me and all I wanted was to spend my days on the couch curled up into a ball and re-watching my favourite TV series.

Until I remembered a motto I used to have for when things fall apart:

Bad things happen.
The good things we make it happen.

This is not a pessimistic saying implying that good things will never happen on their own. But it’s just that when I look back at my life and see all the difficult moments, I see that a lot of them were things out of my control. And when I look at all the good things that happened over the years, I see it all required me to take action.

I have a wonderful partner – but I had to put myself on Tinder to meet him. I live in a place with a nice view – but I had to go out there looking for places to rent. I live in a city that I love – but I had to uproot myself and move here.

Of course, we sometimes have a dose of responsibility for the bad events of our lives. But if there’s one thing I learned when I was 18 is that you can spend your whole life trying to do everything right, and tragedy will still strike you in the head.

So here I am again. In yet another episode a lot of things falling apart at the same time. I did the best I could to avoid all the events of 2024, and yet they still happened. So what can I control? I can make some good things happen.

That’s why I decided to not wait until Spring or a new job to adopt kittens. There are a lot of costs involved in the first year of adopting young pets, and the real responsible thing for me would be to wait. But the emptiness of my house after 15 years of living with cats was more than I could bear.

That’s how, on Boxing Day, we brought these two lovely creatures home:

At 3 months old, Pesto and Sequel are two balls of energy and love. They bonded with each other fast, like kittens often do, and spend the whole morning chasing each other around the house, and the whole afternoon napping together on my desk. They’re super affectionate towards me and have been following me everywhere demanding pets and food.

After a first week of de-worming and dealing with parasites and their messy consequences, we’re now building our own routine. I feed them them first thing in the morning and they spend hours doing their zoomies around the house, while I do some cleaning.

Around noon is time for the siesta. While I browse for jobs online, they crash on the blanket under the monitor until 6 pm, just waking up in time for dinner and more zoomies (those sometimes extend until past midnight).

Despite not having a salary I’m still grateful for being able to spend all this time building a bond with them. I’m also able to witness when they discover things for the first time, like snow or pigeons. I would not be here to see this if I had to commute to work 3 times a week.

I’m also trying to take care of my body, my mental health and my family relationships, 3 other areas that shattered in the waves of 2024.

Overall I’m trying to take things slow. I’m fortunate enough this time to not be in a position in which I desperately need a job, so I can take my time talking to people and browsing the market to make sure I’m making the right decision. This is a luxury I did not always have in the past.

I know that good things will come out of this job search if I just give it enough time and effort. Until then, I’m enjoying my time in the in-between.