Cat on a leash

I hope that I can solve the problems in my 3rd apartment in a row in Massachusetts.  Then I can finally provide a home for my cat, whom I had to leave in Vermont almost 10 years ago.

A sad and funny story about her:

I don't know if I rescued her or took her away from somewhere that she was happy.  As far as I knew, she was a stray: she didn't have a collar and I ran into her on a farm where I had gone for some sort of artistic thing.  I went for a walk and suddenly she was there.  She ran over to me and jumped on my back.  I figured I was chosen and fall was approaching, so I took her home.

After several months, I started to feel bad that she was never able to be outside.  I bought a cat leash.  I was willing to look stupid, walking her.

I looked a lot worse than stupid.  She hated the leash.  She wouldn't walk; she lay down on the sidewalk and meowed an angry, miserable meow that I hadn't heard before.  People walked around us, looking at her and then at me.  I finally had to pick her up and bring her back to my apartment.

I started thinking about that ill-fated attempt to make her happy at about the same time that I moved to this apartment and Charlie Puth offered to call me.  (I think that's what he did.)  I said at the time that I didn't think that dating him would be a good idea; I have talked about why.  I haven't changed my mind about that, but my years of isolation aren't helping me in that decision.  I suppose that if he didn't feel like helping me to do what I think I should do, I might end up spending time with him, and I think that I'd be like my cat when I was trying to walk her.  I know this about how I have acted in other situations when I allowed my loneliness to win.  I shut down; it's not fun.