In a world where cats can talk, there once existed two cats: Seamus and Jaxie.

As you may have guessed, Seamus and Jaxie were in love, and their love was as real and pure as cat love could possibly be — the kind of love that drastically transmutes perspectives and seemingly ionizes the very air around their adorable cat bodies. Tragically, as most love stories are, the yarn spun from the spool of their lives could not remain intertwined indefinitely. Because even in the cat world, life gets in the way.

Seamus hailed from the harsh, Irish desert, where he was the slave to a cruel cat lord. The terms of his enslavement were dire; so much so, in fact, that Seamus was rendered ignorant to the world outside the walls of his captivity, blinded to the possibilities that life could hold for him. Majestic fountains, where milk flows like water. Spools of yarn, as far as the eye can see. Low-flying birds, every direction you turn. And, above all, love. All of it eluded Seamus. That is, until the day he met Jaxie.

The instant his bright yellow cat eyes fell on her, Seamus’ heart leapt through his tiny ribcage, and he could barely stop himself from purring incessantly. In an instant, her beauty had ripped the door off the limitations he had set in his own mind, and he knew he had to escape to be with her.

Seamus escape was a bloody, brutal account. But this is not an action story, so details of his harrowing emancipation will remain undisclosed. Seamus escaped, scratched, bitten and bruised, but more free and happy than ever, for he could now pursue his love and discover what happiness felt like. The adage goes “curiosity killed the cat.” It didn’t kill Seamus. It liberated him.

So Seamus and Jaxie spent a wondrous summer and spring together, and the tale is back where we started. Unfortunately, as the temperatures cooled and ushered in the fall, so too did the sun set on Seamus and Jaxie. Both felines were deliriously jubilant with one another, but felt unsatisfied in their own lives. They both desired to find their purpose outside of one another; after all, how could they be one half of a whole together when they couldn’t even define themselves on their own?

So Seamus took a job writing cat movie scripts in the palms of Kittywood, while Jaxie remained across the Cat Nation to figure out what she wanted from life. Time dragged on, and its unyielding move forward strained their relationship to the breaking point. Communication was difficult, as both led their own lives and could only briefly speak on the phone. Both missed spending time together, and the absence of any nuzzling was as a hairball — extremely unpleasant and difficult to swallow.

They realized that, adverse to their initial beliefs, they could not sustain this entropic pattern. Brief trips to see each other did little to quench the thirst they had; instead of serving as relationship checkpoints, they were brief distractions that did little to change the overall emotions.

The bond they shared was deteriorating before their eyes, allowing unhappiness and discontent to seep in until it threatened to capsize the entire ship. Both were stuck in limbo, unhappy to move forward with one another, but unwilling to quit on a source of such happiness. That’s the thing that the other cats didn’t share with Seamus and Jaxie: it’s not about how much you want things to work, it’s about the way that you feel, separate from wants, or intentions, or even thought. Sometimes cats feel the way that they feel, regardless of mitigating factors.

So they vowed to find a solution, determining the only way to stop the bleeding was to establish a light at the end of the tunnel: a date that they would make a move to either be together, or forge their own, separate paths. Both needed to take into consideration the wants and needs of the other, and figure out if their paths would again cross in the future. Distance with no hope of permanent reunion cannot sow a healthy relationship, a fact that Seamus and Jaxie discovered with a sharp lucidity. And that is what makes long distance so hard.

There are no happy endings in life, only new chapters that will inevitably possess a blend of sadness and elation, for all of time. This fact is no different in cat life. Seamus and Jaxie will continue to work on things, believing all the time that if they continue to work with each other and if their love is meant to happen, then it simply will.