First, there’s Keisha. I drove a friend to the pet store, because she needed a new cage for her parrot. They had a cage full of fluffy black kittens for adoption from the SPCA. There was one ferocious kitten that was romping and playing while the others slept. I took her out of the cage, just to hold her, while my friend was shopping, and she purred in my ear like a motor boat. She had the biggest paws I’d ever seen on a kitten. She’s 12 now, but she still chases her tail occasionally and she finally grew into those paws. I believe she’s part Maine Coon.
Then there’s Skunk. Back when I worked at a lumberyard, I was taking my lunch time walk with a co-worker through the retail yard. The forklift drivers flagged us down, they had transferred a couple of units from the wholesale yard, and there had been a terrified feral kitten in one of them. We were both cat lovers, could we help? We tried, but we only had 30 minutes for lunch and had to get back. So after I work, I went back down to the yard to see if the kitten was still there. He was, and he was scared and tired now, and really missing his mama. I spend an hour crawling in the dirt, calling like a mother cat, trying to convince him it was safe. At first, he came running, but when he saw me, he jumped 3 feet in the air, did a 180 in mid-air and went running back under the lumber. I eventually wore him down and managed to sneak up and grab him. He fluffed and hissed and spit, but I was determined. I had been looking for another cat, so I “happened” to have blankets and a carrier in the car. Luckily, it was my vet’s late night, so I made the 40 minute drive to town. While I was waiting to be seen, I told his story to the man with the mama cat and kittens sitting next to me. He looked into the carrier and said, “Kitten, you don’t know it, but you just won the lottery.” He sure did. He’s 11 now, and the cat that the vet said would never weigh more than 3 pounds or be very tame weighs in at 11 pounds and is the biggest love sponge you’ve ever seen. He’s also spoiled rotten.
About five weeks ago, my neighbors found this little kitty lying by the side of the road, skinny, alone, and frightened. The vet estimated her age at three weeks. As the neighborhood cat person, they gave her to me to care for, and so I did. It was a little touch and go at first, since she refused to nurse from a bottle, but we got her eating solid food, and two weeks ago she went to her new forever home with a colleage of mine. She’s healthy, happy, and bouncing all over the place in her new home.
Their 9-year-old son named her Lil Pudding Potato, or Puddy Tat for short.
A little over two years ago, there was a kitten at Tulare County Shelter (east of Fresno) who nobody wanted. She was grown past the cute-little-fuzzer stage, and it’s very hard for a cat to get adopted after that. She was slated to be euthanized the next day, when some people from a no-kill shelter in the Bay Area (here’s another happy animal story about how the shelter was founded by Tony La Russa) came to take her back to their shelter.
She probably didn’t enjoy the ride to the Bay Area (she does NOT like riding in cars). When she got there, they shaved her tummy and spayed her, and kept her in quarantine away from the other cats for a while. When her quarantine was finished, she was put in a glass-walled room with a big cat tree and two other young cats.
A couple of days after she got out of quarantine, she saw the person she wanted as her human. She went up to the glass door and meowed as loud as she could (and that’s pretty loud). She got the person to pick her up, and the person ended up taking her and one of the other cats from the room home.
Two years later, she and the other cat get along very well (they curl up to sleep together, and they sometimes groom each other). She gets in the bed between her humans and purrs most nights. She has cat trees and cat nests to climb on and sit in. She doesn’t get enough treats from her humans, but other than that she’s very happy.
I don’t know if conures come in any other flavors, but they can make another sound. When George the conure was very relaxed and happy, he would fluff out his chest feathers. When the feathers were all fluffed, the ends of the feathers vibrated, creating a very deep, almost subsonic “Whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum” sound. All other conures I have met have really really like hearing someone go “whuuuuum” at then. I have two rescued African Greys, but they have soft-edged chest feathers and don’t seem to make that kind of noise. If you try to listen closely, they stick a tongue in your ear.
I was working at a veterinary office when I was a teen. I learned that I don’t want to be a vet- I love the animals, I just hate to see them suffering when they’re brought in by uncaring owners. Anyway…
We had this deal with the local no-kill shelter. They’d give us one animal a month, and we’d try to find a good home for it. Almost always succeeded. One month, it was this tiny grey kitten who would alternately be very shy and then very social.
One day I’m cleaning up around the cages in back, and the kitten starts mewing at me. I’m kneeling down to clean the cage below it, and I say, “Sorry, kitty, I don’t have time for you right now.” I’d been having a bad day.
It kept mewing.
I reached up and scritched it on the nose, figuring that would stop it. It made a tiny little purr sound. I looked up, and it reached out between the bars and petted me back on the nose with its paw.
My heart absolutely melted, and I said, “You’re far too cute. I must destroy you now!”
To complete the cuteness, it then gave me a confused little ‘mer?’
That day during my lunch break, there was much petting of said kitten.
This is the happiest I can think of at the moment, but it’s happy and amazing
I work at a local emergency vet clinic. 8 week old kitten comes in. Runt of the litter. Tested positive with panleukopenia. Anyone who works in the field knows that’s almost a guranteed death sentence even for older cats, let alone a little 1lb kitten. But the owner was determined to give him a chance. She paid nearly $2000+ on this little guy. A few days later, he’s in a carrier, mewing loudly and going home with a clean bill of health
Our family had recently lost our pekingese and my mom was determined to never have another indoor dog, until the day my aunt called. Auntie said a dog had been found in her neighborhood, feral and untouchable, and taken to the humane shelter. Mom walked into the shelter as they were trying to corral the dog to put her down. The dog was a biter, but her mouth was so small she couldn’t actually bite no matter how hard she tried. Mom asked “If I can hold her while you give her a rabies vaccine, can I have her?”
Mom comes home with this small, blond dog-like thing. Completely evil. Angry. Go nuts at the sight of a man. Covered with huge tats and tangles. When we bathed her, we stopped counting at 50 ticks. After several baths and haircuts, and many more attempted bites, lo and behold a Lhasa apso, Buffy, appeared. Vet estimated that she lived feral for at least 5 years. But Buffy absolutely worshipped my mom and would defend her from all comers. We kids were tolerated, Dad couldn’t touch her for a year, but my mom loved that dog. We had her for 17 fiercely protective years. Mom’s called me Buffy far more often than my given name.
