It’s been a rough couple of weeks, hasn’t it? I feel like every time I turn on anything – the television, Twitter, Facebook, my phone, the toaster – there’s bad news that’s going to break me a little inside. If you’re feeling a little raw or sad like I have been, I hope this post gives you a little boost.
PREPARE FOR EPIC FUZZY CUTENESS. MAXIMUM CUTE FUZZ HAS BEEN ACTIVATED.
Avon wants to celebrate Jill Shalvis’ first contemporary romance with them, Sweet Little Lies, book one in her new Heartbreaker Bay series, and they’d like to give one of you a $100 gift card to the bookstore of your choice, AND donate $100 in your name to the San Francisco SPCA. Nice, right?
Here’s a little information from Jill as to why:
In my family, we have a long history of being suckers for animals in need. When I was little, I brought home anything that seemed even slightly abandoned. A bird with a bad wing and a matching bad ‘tude that I fed with an eye dropper. A guinea pig that showed up at our back door demanding food, loudly (have you ever heard one of those things squeal?). A snapping turtle rescued from a pond (I still have a scar from that one…). A very pissy old cat that didn’t necessarily want to be domesticated but did enjoy the softness of my bed. If it needed rescuing, I was all too happy to do so. My parents, not so much. But they never said a word to discourage me.
I’d been dating Alpha Man approximately one week when I found the duck in the middle of the road in Los Angeles. He drove an ambulance at the time, and I called him and said I needed help. When he arrived, I’m pretty sure he was surprised to find himself helping me nurse an injured duck but he was game. In fact, it was only a few months later that he himself rescued an abandoned dog who’d been hit by a car. We took him to the vet together. Poor little guy needed surgery and a good home. We named that dog Max, for Maximum Amount Of Money Ever Spent On A Dog, and he lived fifteen wonderful years and was the love of my life for every single one of those years.
We went on to rescue many more animals over the years. During this time we also raised three daughters. Our oldest, a chip off the old block, volunteered at our local humane society one summer a few years back. No one will be surprised to know that I got a call that started with “mom, there’s this two day old abandoned kitten…”
Who can say no to a two day old abandoned kitten? Certainly not me. We’ve had Satan— er, Sadie, ever since.
These days my oldest daughter fosters kittens and puppies for the San Francisco SPCA. She takes in abandoned animals and takes care of them until they are old enough and weigh enough to be neutered and can be adopted. She uses her own money for kitty litter, bedding, toys, etc. She puts her heart and soul into providing these scared, homeless kittens with some desperately needed love, and every time they get adopted, she cries over the loss. And then starts the process all over again.
And honestly? I couldn’t be more proud. I’m also, as I type this, holding a teeny, tiny baby bunny that we found in our yard today, apparently abandoned. The cycle never ends….
Get ready. It’s CUTENESS TIME. Here are just some of the 65+ puppies and kittens Jill’s daughter has fostered.
You might want to sit down. Ready?
PUPPY TOES AND POLKA DOTS!
SO TEENY!
SMALLEST EARS EVER!
HAI!
KITTEN WITH SHOES. Must go lie down. Excuse me.
TOO MANY TOES. OVERLOAD OF TOES.
Well, I feel better. I hope you do, too! And if not, here are a few more rescue pets, though these are full grown.
Right before we moved, our last remaining cat, Spawn, died suddenly, so for the first few months in our new home, we had no cats. It was weird. Then we adopted two rescue gentlemen who have lived mostly under The Futon of Concealment. They’re finally coming out during daylight hours!
This is Orville.
This is Wilbur, Orville’s brother, who throws a huge house party every night and sleeps all day. Tell me I’m not alone and that your cats are like this. He’s weird, I tell you.
That’s Zeb, who desperately wants to be BFFs with Wilbur, who is not interested unless he gets to chase Zeb. Their relationship is weird.
And this is Zeb (front) and Buzz, who are likely brothers, and are also rescues. Buzz is scared of everything (including the camera, hence the floppy front ears) except Zeb, who is his best friend in the world.
What about you? Who are your favorite furry friends? Do you have a fuzzy creature picture that lifts you up? Just leave a comment and tell us about your rescue pet, or the animal you love most in the universe. I know a lot of you have rescues, too. If you’d like to share a picture, please do, but please make sure it’s less than 600 px wide. By commenting, you’ll be entered to win a $100 gift card to the bookstore of your choice, and have a donation to the SF SPCA made as well. Thank you to Avon and to Jill Shalvis for the prizes and the pictures!
Standard disclaimers apply: Void where prohibited. Open to US residents of 18 years of age and over. We are not being compensated for this giveaway except with a massive dose of adorable cuteness. Animals in mirror may be closer than they appear. Belly rubs always appreciated. Thunderstorms can go away now. Comments will close on Friday 23 24June around 12pm ET, and one winner will be selected at random.
Cuteness: GO!
ETA: We have a winner! Congratulations to tikaanidog! You’ll be receiving a $100 gift card to the bookstore of your choice, and a donation in your name will be made to the SF SPCA. Yay!
But most of all, thank you to everyone who entered, and made this thread such a fuzzy, warm, lovely place to share stories about our furry friends and family members. This comment thread has been a solace and wonderful reading experience. You and all your furry friends, past and present, are awesome.
Just a month or so ago we adopted our giant Siberian husky Poe Dameron (my choice of name) from the shadiest “rescue.” (Shady Lady tried to ignore his obviously infected head wound and drugged him to make him more sedate for our adoption meeting. NOT COOL). But now he’s with us and we love him to bits, and his favorite thing to do at night just before bed is to play chase with my mom and sprint throughout the house. I love my giant floofball of a rescue.
We rescued a cat on Fort Meade and took him to Hawaii. He returned with us to Fort Meade along with three more cats we rescued: Zsa Zsa whose personality matches her namesake; Zane who is is long, thin, and gray; and Kono who is a pudgy Samoan warrior. Their first winter in Baltimore – and exposure to snow – was hilarious!
My favourite animal ever was my cousins’ dog. He was this massive (seriously, guy was HUGE) mastiff mix named Gabbar. And for all he was named after the meanest Hindi movie villain of all time, he was a big old sweetheart and the nicest, dumbest mutt ever. He’d let my other cousins’ lab, Zara, bully him mercilessly, for all she was half his size. Seriously – she’d chase him, wrestle with him, steal his toys. I miss the ridiculous mutt.
My shadow and best friend, Jessica Kitty, passed earlier this month. Along with the other bad news in the world, that has made this month nearly unbearable. Thank you for the wonderful pictures of sweet babies. Jessica was a shelter kitty, as is her brother, Moose.
The plan, when my heart heals a little, is to go get two girls from our local shelter. Moose will just have to deal!
It’s Day Four after rotator cuff surgery, and only two things comfort me(besides the drugs). Daisy, a gorgeous 6 year old cancer survivor; and Ranger, the most lovable stinker of a cat I’ve ever known. They are both being sweet and cuddly with momma. Romance novels, like life, are much improved by the addition of animals.
I have had a cat my entire life with maybe 2 years out 59 without feline supervision. We had Fluff for 17+years. She was a gorgeous long hair with very little brain. Every day – everything was always a new and huge surprise to her. She went on to the great litter box over the rainbow in January. 8 weeks later, I got 5 month old Clementine from the local animal shelter. Clem is the most adorable, playful, social and affectionate cat I’ve ever had.
All our family pets are rescues! My beagle is 17 years old and stubborn as hell. Last night she got so excited about the turkey burgers we had for dinner she ran around the house for 10 minutes (run = slow trot for her these days). Good times.
I currently have Ella a 13 year old doxie and Bogey an 8 year old Yorkie poodle mix better known around here as a porkie, since he’s a little round ball of fur.
We have two kittehs, although I’m not sure if they can be termed rescues. Well, one of them can.
The first is Jack, who was an answer to a newspaper ad for free kittens (yeah, that’s how old he is, my baby is pre-Craigslist). I requested a girl, and you know how it can be sometimes hard to tell with kittens. Got Zoe home, and was like, “I’m pretty sure Zoe has testicles.” I renamed him after Captain Jack Sparrow, as the Pirates of the Caribbean thing was big during that time. He’s eleven now, and a mama’s boy. He’s also about twenty pounds, and a complete angel about letting the kids carry him around. He’s a solid smoky gray, with big, wise eyes, and the end of the bed down by my husband’s feet is solidly his territory.
Then there’s Gabby. A friend of mine knew we had recently had our cat Turbo die (he had a bad habit of rushing out doors, and while Jack has been known to do the same, although less so now as he’s gotten older, Jack also never got near our street and Turbo did). She was in animal rescue, and had three solid black kittens that were about 5 months old that needed homes. Their names were Gabby, Lily, and Mario. I took Gabby, who Annette assured me was the most loving, easygoing cat ever. Yeah, I got took. She had the rescue organization pay for all the spaying, adoption fees, and vet stuff; I just had to pick her up from the vet. That sweet baby hissed and swiped at me from the inside of that carrier, and a relationship was born. She hates to be held, but she will loftily follow you into the bathroom and demand that you pet her. While she tolerates my presence in her queendom, she adores my daughter, and thus they are BFFs. She’s also an effective murderer, and the house has been rodent free since she came to live here. She’s absolutely gorgeous and well aware of it, and a total Halloween kitty.
Those pics are so incredibly sweet!
My furry kids are rescues also. I consider it a mutual rescue because what would I do without them?
I have three girls, (two lab mixes and a cat) or as I refer to them sometimes as Da Girls, my posse, or my entourage as they follow me around all day.
My 16 year old cat, Boo (she’s my BFF) wakes me in the morning for her medication with a tap and murr and if that is ineffective, she murrs repetitively in my face. Again, if that is ineffective she goes out in our cathedral ceilinged living room and throws her kitty voice in a megaphone style meow. She is annoyingly really good at it. Boo also does the megaphone meow in the middle of the night while playing. It is amazing how one cat can sound like a heard of buffalo in the quiet of the night.
We don’t have any animals with fur, but we do have a lovely leopard gecko, Blitz, and a hermit crab named Phoebe. Blitz was bought for a scout badge–who knew they lived 15 years! Phoebe was a carnival rescue, i.e., my daughter won her playing a carnival game.
After my three-year-old Wheaten terrier died from a genetic disease, I was really heartbroken since she was the first dog I’d ever owned. It took me a few months to get ready for a new pet.
Boz Scaggs is my mom’s dog but I’m the one taking care of him a lot of the time. When she adopted him, he barely had any fur and had a lot of trouble getting chosen because he became yappy when around other dogs. He’s silent when he’s chilling on your lap. It’s taken about three years to wear him down but Stockholm syndrome has finally kicked in and he’s gotten used to me. For a long time we thought he was a Morkie until we watched a Dogs 101 episode about the Chinese Crested. Our best guess now is that he’s half Crested, half Yorkie. He has the Crested’s belly spots, for instance.
Here’s a picture of the five-pound menace with one of my hands for scale: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/jetfire85/28632db6-bb1c-4739-a230-cf16db6a85b2_zpsxkefragh.jpg
We have Brady, aka Gooberus Maximus, our pit-lab-great dane? mix. He was surrendered to the shelter with burns down his whole back from a dodgy flea and tick treatment and was at risk for being put down because the stress of shelter living was making him fear aggressive. Poor guy was so scared and anxious and I was a goner. Three and a half years of plenty of love and snacks, he’s the seventy-five pound cuddle beast who sleeps in our bed every night and our best friend/baby/fuzzy overlord.
Everywhere I go, cats either come up to me or cry at me. Seiously, cats have come up to me while walking the track in the morning, on my porch, in mall & grocery store parking lots, on my parents’ porch, on the street, wherever. They’ve even let other people pass by before stepping out in front of me. I rescue a ridiculous number of them, TNR the rest and feed 2 colonies as well.
I have a few (actual numbers are never mentioned much less discussed), none of whom appreciate the well-intentioned but not-too-intelligent German Shepherd who just wants to be friends with all of them.
I’m recovering from abdominal surgery at my parents (with the dog) and go home daily with my mom to take care of them. We’re mobbed at the door by incredibly friendly cats not happy about being left alone. The guilt is killing me but I still can’t do very much and won’t be healed enough to go home for another week. And even then my mom is still going to have help me for 6-8 weeks more. But at least then the cats will be happier.
One year ago, we lost the last of a trio of siblings found in an abandoned car 19 years ago. Calvin, Hobbes & Susie were only about 10 days old and their eyes were just beginning to open. They were found on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year and were little fluff balls that grew up to be some of the nicest, sweetest and most beautiful cats I’ve ever known. Still miss them daily.
The dogs I grew up with were rescues. Not only did they have a high tolerance for childish shenanigans, but they taught us kids quite a lot, too.
My husband and I have two rescues we love dearly.
One was a marbled tabby kitten with deep green eyes that my mother and brother in-law found at a liquor store during a bad rain storm. At the time we had just gotten married and wanted to adopt a cat so his mom gave her to to me and it was love at first site. We’ve has Seven for two years now and still love her dearly even if she has quite the mischievous side( which is adorable).
The other is a three-legged tortoiseshell cat with calico colors. Back in September we decided Seven needed a friend, so we went to PetSmart and fell in love with the three-year-old tortie. She been picked up a year prior in a box with a litter of kittens and then spent the rest of the year in-and-out foster homes. She’d also been returned twice. We were drawn to her regardless, but hearing her backstory made us want her even more. We’ve had Freyja ever since and she is one of sweetest, most snuggle cats I’ve ever met.
All of our pets came from bad situations. One of my main missions in life is to make sure the rest of their days are safe and happy.
Our beautiful girl kitty is in what we think of as the Cat Witness Protection Program. We got her from a vet who’d been supposed to euthanize her but instead lied to the client and got the word out to a few people that she needed a home in a different city. The client was a big wheel in that area’s humane society. She hated the cat for being rambunctious, which in her book is apparently a capital offense.
I wonder how often that happens because my wonderful Luna, a blue point siamese was saved and nursed back to health by a vet tech after her previous owners said to euthanize rather than heal.
I was fortunate to get her but she is a girl that wants to be the only pet in the place and the vet tech had a multiple dogs and cats.
Two cats: Milo and Lexi, both rescues, both very wee. Milo is a sweet, loving little ginger guy. Lexi is all coal-black attitude. She also has her own twitter account (because of course she does): https://twitter.com/VonHauspanther
A month ago I picked up my puppy. His name is Alistair and he’s a soft coated wheaten terrier who kind of looks like a teddy bear or an ewok right now. It’s a good thing he’s so adorable because last night he managed to get poop on his ear, so got his first bath as a surprise end to the weekend.
For me, it’s my two dogs: Bella, a large and beautiful tan-and-white canine mutt; and Lola, an extremely loving, cuddly, and fat black-and-white chihuahua. Big Bella, little Lola!
All of my pups have been rescues. Currently, Mak (an 85 pound husky/lab mix) and Rex (a 25 pound border collie) allow me to share the house. That’s all I have to do is make sure there is food and wood in the dish, treats in the house, pet them, let them sleep on the bed, and make sure the house payments are made. My boys are generous to a fault and leave me with enough dog hair to corner the market on dog hair (is there a market for it?)
I don’t have any rescues but the animal I love most was Sadie, a goat at my grandma’s when I was little. I loved to pet her, and talk to her. It makes me want to consider getting a goat right now even though I am a city dweller.
I don’t have any pets, not allowed by owner and I am slightly allergic to cats. But I am surrounded by cat people and they share their antics with me regularly. I enjoy the stories.
SO. MANY. FURRIES. 🙂 our house is full up on fuzzballs. All the cats were found/saved by us – Bit, the now 17 lb cat who started out as literally nothing more than skin and bones as a tiny kitten (got his name from ‘little bit of nothing’, which he was), MeyMey, found under a canoe at a couple days old, and Shadow and Tux, rescued/tamed feral kittens. then there are our dogs – all 4 of them. Koda, our elderly siberian, Sierra and Loki, german shepherds, and the baby, Kira. majorly bratty Malamute mix.
I’ve got two wonderful Potcake dogs who started their lives in a junk yard somewhere in the Bahamas (yes, it’s paradise, but still … they were homeless), were rescued by the Bahamian Potcake rescue group, and now lead lives of luxury (and snow) up in central NY. They are very. Cute, and I’m sorry I can’t figure out how to link to a picture!
Two rescued Standard Poodles and a pass-along spaniel “work” from home with me every day. One of our Poodles is a puppy mill survivor and the other came to us as an untrained overgrown puppy. A year ago, we lost a rescued Poodle to hemangiosarcoma, but we made sure his last month was his best!
I have deeply loved all our dogs. With the exception of Sasha, our giant-sized Malamute and the love of my life, they were all “informal” rescues. Meaning we took them from people who didn’t want/deserve them.
Mitzi (our first & the smartest dog EVER) belonged to my mom’s hairdresser, who lived around the corner. She was walking Mitzi, who couldn’t have been more than 6mo at the time, and Mom stepped out to visit on the sidewalk. Shortly after she went out, Mom rushed back in and borrowed $5 from my older brother. This was pretty amazing as it was 1965 and $5 was A LOT of money for a kid to have in hand. Must have been around the time of his First Communion… Anyway, apparently Cindy had done nothing but complain about what a PITA Mitzi was & responded to my mother’s obvious puppy love by saying “You can have her for $5.” We all agree it was the best $5 my mother ever spent. Or my brother. We’ve been having that argument for decades.
We got Sasha as a late life child for Mitzi. She didn’t appreciate it at first, but then she figured out how warm & cuddly a Malamute could be in the winter.. Also funniest thing ever watching a 25 lb mutt back a 145 lb behemoth off the food bowl with a curl of her lip.
Dusty came from a friend of my brothers’. He & his mom were moving and an apartment complex didn’t allow dogs over 25 lbs. Dusty, a collie, had 25 lbs just in hair. They were just going to have her put down. I KNOW!! At which point aforementioned older brother, who was also living in an apartment, said “No, I’ll take her.” And then she ended up at the house when he moved to an apartment that didn’t take dogs over 25 lbs.
Barney belonged to my baby brother’s college roommate. Long messy story involving roommate being home for holidays and having rabid flu making him insensible to Barney’s requests for “Out! Please! NOW!” causing an unfortunate incident, resulting in his stepmonster demanding that Barney live out in the yard. In the winter. In Chicago. And expected to do the same when school let out. In the summer. In Chicago. Second smartest dog ever. He spent all night on the sofa with me when I fell asleep at the house the night after my mom’s memorial service.
Now I’m auntie to the cutest, sweetest, most irrepressible pit bull on the planet. My aforementioned (seeing a trend) older brother’s BFF volunteers with a rescue group and talked my brother into taking her when his stepdaughter decided that the two puppies he’d talked her into was one puppy too many. So now we have Ma Fan (chinese for trouble, which she totally earned) who loves me madly. Really, she’ll greet anyone else who walks in the door like a normal well mannered, if interested, dog. My entrance turns her into a giddy, leaping, barking, whirling dervish. I’m pretty giddy about her as well.
May be my longest non-book review post. But who doesn’t love to talk about their dogs?
All of the pets me or my family have had have been rescues or strays, including my current sweet girl cat Angel. She’s white with black spots, including a spot on her back hindquarters that is shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head. She has the prettiest green eyes, and she’s the star of my instagram account. 🙂 https://www.instagram.com/p/sFgKi_LBau/?taken-by=freereverie
My cat is named Business Cat (Busy for short). She’s the sweetest, easiest 9 year old tuxedo cat there ever was, and she’s sitting on my lap right now. Not precisely a rescue, but she was rehomed to me by a college student who couldn’t keep her any longer.
@LisaJ, there IS a market for it. Back in the day I got to chatting with a fiber artist from Montana at the Ren Faire once, and she used dog fur in all sorts of projects including sweaters. I was going to ship her a box of Sasha’s, but lost her card.
My current lady-love is Banshee, a gray tabby with an incessant desire to play fetch. I don’t know what her situation was before I picked her up at the Humane Society, but bringing her home was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Our family has 4 rescues–3 cats, 1 dog, each of them hard-to-adopt black cats/dogs. Drogon, Carolina and Jackson are the cats; Baby (better known as The Babe) is our black lab/whippet/other stuff mutt. Carolina is my sweet girl and the others have moved out to live with my daughters. Rescues for the win!
We have three great rescue cats. The first is Maddie, our little old lady, named for Madeleine L’Engle. When I was in high school, my grandmother found Maddie on her ranch and had to bottle feed her. I begged, pleaded, and bribed my parents to let me have her and her litter mate. Maddie has been my constant companion ever since. When I moved from Texas to Connecticut for grad school, she was there (and she yowled the whole way). When I moved to NC, she was there. She’s a special old girl who is still full of sass.
Hank is our second cat. I found him at work a couple years ago, picked him up intending to find him a home, and ended up taking him to my home. He’s a trouble maker who loves to climb everything which makes some sense as he was named after Hank McCoy, aka Beast. He chatters endlessly and enjoys waking us up early.
Samson is our most recent addition. He’s the youngest and the biggest of our cats. He’s always in movement, loves hanging out with his bestie, Hank, and enjoys cuddling with everyone.
You can see a multitude of cat pictures on my instagram feed: https://www.instagram.com/theolibrarian/
Our rescue kitty cat is a Tuxedo Cat and her name is Fancy, because she is SO fancy. She’s the Queen of our home.
My daughter found a puppy abandoned by the side of the road and recued it. She talked to local rescue agencies and was told that, if they took him, no one would adopt him since he is a pit bull mix. I swear that dog is her friend, cliche, or not. We have also taken two kittens, also found abandoned.
We have five dogs..all rescue, mostly doxies. We did foster care, and the ones no one adopted stayed. My husband swears that every time a hard to place dog showed up, they said “foster it at the crazy house, they’ll keep ANY THING.”
We also have a junkyard cat…seven toes on one side, six on another…..
I adopted a smooth collie mix, her name is Maddie. She was born at the rescue and then returned a year later, for being “too active”, so she languished at the rescue for another eight months. She is literally the biggest couch potato in the world, until she gets outside then runs like a freaking greyhound. We clocked her in a car once, she runs very elegantly at 35 mph. Maddie has gotten a little more special as she gets older, leash reactivity and grumpiness are setting in, but I’ve started taking her hiking and she literally screamed this past weekend when we got the state park. Typically she just moos, which is why her nickname is Moo-Moo.
Maddie was supposed to be the family pet, but when we went to get her, my mom took one look at this rat terrier mix named “Glen” and said “We’ll take him too”. A few years later, we were up in the mountains for mother’s day, and out of the woods walks Charlie, a yellow husky mix. His skin was gray, his ribs and hips were showing and he was covered in ticks, and he chose us. By December, my mom faced the fact that he was ours and we had three dogs.
My go-to fuzzy animal video is totally the husky that refuses to get in his cage. 🙂
Because of our situation, my family didn’t have many animals when I was growing up, but I’ve rescued a large number of cats and dogs as an adult, keeping some of the cats and finding homes for the others.
When my last cat died, I was devastated by the loss and remained cat-less for 3 years. I wasn’t emotionally ready for a new cat, but was also concerned that I was too old. My cats have all been long-lived and I didn’t want to pre-decease a pet. Could I really count on living another 20 years? Earlier this year, I finally started to casually look at pictures of some of the cats at the cat shelter I support, concentrating on the seniors. I still wasn’t ready to make a move, but was at least letting myself entertain the possibility.
While I was dithering, the decision was taken out of my hands. I received an email from an old friend telling me that a friend of hers had just had to unexpectedly go to a nursing home, leaving her 12 yo cat with nowhere to go. No one was in a position to take him in, so my friend was trying to find a no-kill shelter! Long story short (too late for that), Hector’s been with me for 3 months now and has been diligently training me on just how he likes things ever since. He has very exact expectations and requirements, but he’s a patient and persistent teacher so I should be up to snuff soon. In the meantime, I talk to him about his “first” mom, reassuring him that she still loves him and is very sad she can’t be with him anymore. Likewise, I take pictures of him so first mom knows he’s doing OK. As happy as Hector and I are, I think it’s a terrible shame that more nursing homes can’t accommodate pets.
SO MANY TOES. I die.
Both our cats are rescue cats. Westley, a dapper black and white gent, is very much my husband’s cat. To hear him tell it, he was leaving the vet’s office after having his old cat put to sleep when a rescue kitten left at the office that day literally *leapt* from the arms of the vet tech into his arms, attached to him with all sixteen claws, and started purring happily. That was twelve years ago. Westley puts up with me (I do feed him, after all), but his preferred lap will always be my husband’s. He says that at one point when we were dating, while I was napping on the couch. Westley wandered in, sniffed my hand, then looked at him and said “Mew?” My husband said “Yes, we’re keeping her”, and Westley licked my hand, then hopped onto his lap. I know where I stand in the grand scheme of things. *grins*
Hector almost didn’t happen. My husband and I had been talking about getting a second cat to keep Westley company, and we wandered into our pet store to get food and litter, still idly throwing the idea around. A local rescue had just brought in some of their cats, and we stopped to read about “Noah”, who had been found in a Dumpster. A skinny half-grown grey-and-white cat looked at us through the cage bars, blinked his crossed yellow eyes, said “MAH!”, and then started purring like an outboard motor. When we took him out to see how he reacted to cuddles, he headbutted us both in the nose enthusiastically, and the purring somehow got *louder*. He was home with us in three weeks, renamed “Hector”, and is now a snuggly, purry 8-year-old who loves nothing more than to be told he is a good kitty and receive scritches after ferociously killing his catnip mouse. His crossed eye turned out to be almost completely blind–the rescue folks think he might have had a head injury as a kitten–but aside from making him a tad less graceful than he thinks he is, it doesn’t slow him down. Nothing does.