Both Cats and I were diagnosed with Agoraphobia.  Cats had panic attacks or anxiety attacks worse than I did as she fought against the confinement of being home bound.  She might be in a store or shopping and have to leave her cart and rush home when an  attack occurred.  I just stayed home and did not venture out.  On occasions she would persuade me to come to her home and aware that I felt safe there, she would be prepared for me to stay days or weeks as I had to get courage to depart and return home.

My residence was also home to her and she sometimes stayed a week or more. We spent the hours designing our web sites, creating graphics, and viewing television. She always kept up with the news and would call me to tell me to watch a particular  channel for news of importance to us.

She often encouraged me to seek help for my agoraphobia, but I was content to sit in my own little world and enjoy my computer.  When the internet became a house hold word, I traveled to different countries, met friends, joined web rings and joined all kinds of committee's  without ever leaving my home.  My social life was full.  Sadly, I knew more about my cyber friends than I did about my next door neighbor. 

I would like to do some research on a condition  Cat's had that should have a name.  In person, she was a well spoken, impressive  lady. Coherent, expressive, and articulate. On the web however, she was exactly the opposite. You  had to decipher her messages. She would leave out words from a sentence, sometimes words that changed the meaning of the sentence.  It seemed as if her mind got ahead of her typing.  I asked her many times to read a message she had sent me and she would read the message as she had intended it to read, still not noticing she had omitted words.  I found an illusion once that explains how  our brain misses certain words. It reminded me of Cat's problem with communication on the net.  Cat's was also fastidious about her appearance.  Although she had gained weight as she got older, she was always neat, and meticulous about her hair and makeup, I often wondered if she had any gray hairs yet, as she colored it regularly and it always looked like her natural youthful color. 

Cats chose her screen name because her initials spelled cats.  her maiden name spelled Cat.  Charlotte Ann  T.   her husbands last name started with an S.  

My love for Cats helped me travel to her home and to her funeral.  That's  normal for most people, but for someone with severe agoraphobia it was a giant leap.  Cat's  would be proud of me !!