(Written from my Emotional Support Animal or ESA’s, point of view)

Hello to all you humans, if you do not know already, the name I was given by my human is Nala.

I’m fine with the name, after all, it is the same name of the lioness in “The Lion King”.

Nala, my emotional support animal, in all her splendid glory.

Anyways, I will tell you a bit about my job taking care of my human as an ESA.

First, my human raised me since I was about eight weeks old in 2010 (and was undoubtedly drawn to my gorgeous looks), but also so I could learn my human’s cues early on.

This way I am much more in tune with my human’s habits and when they are getting stressed, anxious and even having a really bad nightmare so I can wake them up.

I even know when they’re supposed to be in bed to get a full night’s sleep, which my silly human keeps forgetting, so I have to go and remind them it’s time for bed.

My human taking a photo of me, understandably, while I help them relax so they can fall asleep.

Sometimes my human gets really stressed out or I will notice they’re starting to have a panic attack before they do. In those situations, I do a few different things my human helped me to learn that are also tasks service dogs learn to help their owners.

One thing I do is to lay on top of my human’s chest and use my weight to apply pressure there to ease anxiety.

My human doesn’t have to be laying down for me to notice they need me to do this. I also know just where to lay when they are sitting in a chair or I will ask them until they pick me up.

Normally I’m not a fan of being held, but I want my human to feel better, so during these moments I start to purr extra loud and snuggle close to them.

Another thing I do is when my human already is having a panic attack called “break the spell”. When this happens, I don’t leave my human, I rub against them, purr and overall give them lots of attention so they can refocus on me and not their anxiety.

What makes this different is normally I like my space like the rest of my kind and once I’ve had my fill of attention I leave (I am a cat after all and have a very busy and important schedule).

But if my human needs me, I don’t leave until they are all better, which can be a couple minutes or an hour or even the whole night. Either way, I don’t leave them until they’re out of the panic attack and then I’m free to go and hunt bugs and that little red dot that keeps bothering me!

And my human takes care of me too. I have lots of toys, a couple scratching posts, catnip and treats! I even have a harness for going on walks once the weather is better (though I still purr-fer the warm indoors and cozy blankets of my human’s bed.)

Well that’s all for now and it’s time for me to return to my regular activity at this time:

Sleeping is a very important part of my day!