ever since i was a little girl i was in love with animals. we always had a dog growing up, and i do love dogs, but i always wanted a cat so bad. i had a million cat stuffed animals in the place of a real one. my mom did not like cats, even though as a child she had a cat that she loved. for some reason over time she decided that "kittens are cute, but then they grow up" and grow up in her mind meant act like the evil siamese cats from lady and the tramp.
once my parents separated my dad, who spoiled me just a little, promised me he would get me a cat once he got his own place. initially he was living with my aunt until he could afford his own place. once he got his own place he told me that for christmas he would get me my cat. even as a child i researched the crap out of everything so i was more than prepared to get my cat and had bought everything we would need and it was all set up. the only thing left to do was pick out my cat. at that time i was not educated about how bad pet stores that sell cats and dogs were(another story for another post) so our first stop was the pet store. we did not take any cats out we just pet them through the cage. i can still see the fuzzy orange kitten that i wanted. but my dad, smart guy that he was, said let's keep looking to make sure this is the one you want. the kittens were a bit older so i was kind of curious to see if we could find a real little guy. so we went to the shelter next. the lady at the shelter really wanted us to look at the older cats saying that they can be better pets because there is not much training involved, but i was determined to get a kitten of course(again i did not know as much as i do now, and now i am the women in the shelter).
so we picked out a little brown tabby kitten to visit with in a room. well that's when the sneezing started. i didn't think much of it because i had never been allergic to anything before. but the lady at the shelter asked if i was allergic to cats. we didn't know. "well," she said," it could just be that the cool is cold or something, but i would make sure you know before you take a cat home". i might mention that to this day, i am still allergic to brown tabbys.
well needless to say, i was incredibly upset. my dad said why don't we sleep on it and try to go see some cats the next day somewhere else to make sure. again, i will never forget going to this vet clinic that had a couple black and white kittens that i took out and hugged and kissed. it was not long before my neck broke out in hives and that sealed the deal-no kitty for me. we went to our family doctor and he convinced my dad, rightly so, that i should not have a cat because it would not get better and i would have to take medicine for the rest of my life, and may still be miserable everyday. i knew i didn't want that because have a constant allergic reaction would be aweful, but i cried for years over being allergic to my most coveted choice of pet, and i mean YEARS! i was confused and angry with God even through my early 20's and could not reason out why i had to be allergic to cats. well i have other year-round allergies and have to take stuff everyday of my life anyways :P
well i started volunteering at the shelter in college and at the zoo. after college i had built my resume up enough to get a job at a vet clinic, and then finally i got my dream job at my local shelter that i used to volunteer at. by then i had built up immunity to most cats. there are still a few out there that make me wheeze :P i loved working with cats the most, cleaning, petting, and playing with them. i also watched their behavior and looked out for who was sick. i was pretty much the cat girl and i knew them all by name.
so that brings us to june 4th 2008. it was a normal morning at the shelter and dr. todd and i were in the middle of spaying and neuturing the cats that were next up for adoption. next thing we know erica, the animal control officer, brings in a litter of 3/4week old kittens that she had just picked up that were abandoned. there was a little orange and white kitten that looked mostly dead. he was still alive, but he was not moved or anything. she announced that she was going to euthanize it, which was standard procedure for the situation. even though we had a vet and a surgery room, we still had limited resources, and besides, working in a shelter that gets millions of kittens you have to be realistic whether you like it or not. but dr. todd was feeling spry that day and said "hmm, let me see that kitten." erica handed the kitten over and he looked at it and said "let me try something." he got a suringe from the counter and some drugs from the cabinet and injected the little guy with it. he said he thought he was just hypoglycemic and he then wrapped the kitty in a blanket and put him on the heated surgery table while we continued to work. later we force fed the kitty some soft food and he slowly began to perk up a bit as the day went on.
towards the end of the day we were cleaning up the surgery room and dr todd turned to me and said "did you say you were taking that kitten home?". i was confused, " no i didn't say that," and then i realized "oh! you
want me to take the kitten home to watch him". he smiled at me. "okay," i said "but just for the week to make sure he will be okay". We didn't know how long the kitten had been hypoglycemic and therefore could potentially have brain damage and would then not be an adoptable canidate and need to be euthanized (again you need to be realistic with this kind of work so it's not for everyone). so we thought we'd give the kitty a week to get better and prove that he would be a healthy one before we did anything. it was better for him to be with someone who knew what to look for and what to do so i was fine with it.
so the orange and white kitty came home with me even though i was suppose to be taking a break from kitten fostering, and i was also planning my wedding that was in about 7 weeks. he went back and forth to work with me and was doing great. at some point during that week corey, my husband(fiance at the time), decided we should call him "larry" after some mentally handicapped guy he used to know and liked. at this point we weren't sure if larry was retarded or not, but we were kinda leaning toward yes. i use the word in the purest sense, for the meaning of it is "slow" and larry was "slow" or so it seemed when he would look at you all crazy googly-eyed like and follow a little slowly and play with things that were not there, which he still does to this day.he also never made a peep, no meow or purring at all. the only thing he did was a silent mew, which is know by few to be the best compliment a cat can ever give you. i did not know this at the time i just thought this kitten has not learning to speak. but corey and i appreciated it because we were never fond of noisy cats.
at the end of the week larry was doing fine and i thought i'd try to call some of my favorite foster moms to see if they would like to take him until he was ready to be neutured and go up for adoption as i thought my work was done and as a rule i didn't like to foster very long for fear of getting attached and i also liked fostering the bottle babies until they were on solids. most available fosters were not able to take the bottle babies due to time and the amount of commitment it takes to care for the little ones, so i would do it until they were a certain age and then i would pass them on and take the next batch. but as fate would have it larry had another relapse of hypoglycemic shock one morning before work. i found him totally limp just like how he was when he came into the shelter a week before. i brought him to corey and told him to say goodbye to larry as i cried because i thought that's it this poor kitty will have a horrible quality of life if he keeps doing this and for seemingly no reason since he was eating plenty of food just fine.
so i brought him into work with me as usually and we waited for dr. todd to come in and take a look at him. he said we could try again to give him a shot but a more powerful one directly into his bone and just see how he responds throughout the day before we jumped to a conclusion. so we shaved his hind leg and injected him right into his bone and force fed him and i nursed him all day and things were not looking good. he had made no improvements like he did last time. it was getting pretty late in the day and larry would still not move on his own so we felt we had to make a decision. larry was purring in my arms, which he had not done yet, and dr. todd said it was a "death purr" which some cats do before they die or in fear or pain(its not always happy). i told dr. todd that i thought he would have a horrible life if he kept relapsing like this and who knows what condition his brain was in. he agreed and just as he was walking over the cabinet to get things ready larry quite miraculously stood up! we both laughed and said ok nevermind that's our answer :) he never relapsed again.
now you might think that the rest is history but the story is just getting started in a way.
about a week later a little gray kitten with a broken front leg came in and also needed some special attention. at this point larry was doing great and i was going to foster him until the wedding. dr. todd asked me to foster little gray kitty, whom we affectionately called cassidy, until her leg was better. i was happy to do it as i wanted a friend for larry so he could learn to be a cat and grow up to be a nice kitty. cats that don't have litter mates before about 8 weeks old grow up to be anti-social and mean cats because they don't learn things like bite-inhibition etc. larry and cassidy were so cute together and she taught larry how to meow and chirp which is the cutest thing! they both were doing great health-wise and everything but the time came for corey and i to get married and go on our honeymoon and the kittens were not quite ready to go up for adoption. so i asked my favorite foster mom if she would take them for a couple weeks until i got back from vacation because i wanted to see them before they got adopted. a plus was that she had dogs and i thought it would be even better for them adoption-wise to get socialized to dogs as well.
now corey and i never thought we wanted to have a cat. we thought we would get a dog at some point probably when we got a house and that would be it. i was convinced at this point that i was just not meant to have a cat even though i didn't know why. i just thought the cats at the shelter were my cats and that was enough for me. if i could make just one kitty's life good even for a day or a moment i had done my job on this planet. corey and i were in agreement of one pet and that would be a dog at some point when we were not in an apartment.
well when we got back from our honeymoon the foster mom brought larry and cassidy in to be fixed, but they had a little bit of upper respiratory infection(common for shelter cats). so we decided i should take them home for another week or so on meds before we do surgery. they got better, we fixed them and they went up for adoption. cassidy got adopted fairly quickly. she was such a pretty medium hair gray kitty that was a lovey purr monster and i believe she went to a very nice loving home.
time passed, it was labor day weekend and larry was still waiting for his forever home to come along. it was the saturday before labor day and i was working. saturdays were always crazy at the shelter. this one family with a pre-teen girl and boy came in and were looking at the kittens. i don't remember really interacting with them one on one but i was listening and watching them and i didn't like them. something was off about them. you know how you just get a vibe from people sometimes, but you can't refuse adoption to someone just because you get a bad vibe from them. well of course i caught them looking and talking about larry. they had talked to someone in the shelter and it sounded like their story kept changing as to whether or not they had had any experience with a cat before or not and they had planned on getting a kitten for the girl and a dog for the boy because that's what they wanted etc. i was just so scared that they were going to adopt larry and ruin my happy little kitty that i had worked so hard at keeping alive and socializing to be the perfect cat. they filled out an application, but they never put a hold on him or anything serious, but they said they would come back on tues which was the next day we were open to the public for adoption after the holiday weekend. well when i read their application i was mortified. i don't remember their answers to everything, but the one that i will not forget was that they said if their cat ever messed outside of the litter box they would point at the mess in front of the cat and yell at it. this is a message for another time, but this is probably the worst thing you could do next to physically abusing your cat. it for sure is mentally abusive.
i went home crying to corey and telling him the whole story about how awful these people were that were looking at our larry and i knew that they would come back and adopt him because we had no solid reason to refuse them. in rescues you don't need to give a good reason not to adopt to someone, but shelters don't have that kind of privilege for more than one reason. corey asked me what i wanted to do. i wasn't sure but i knew i could never forgive myself knowing that he didn't go to a less than perfect home. corey said that we could adopt him and still be able to get a dog some day and i'm telling you i cried tears of joy. i can't think of a time i've ever been so happy in my whole life, or that anyone had giving me a greater gift. we went out and bought all the stuff we needed for larry to come home for good and we went to the shelter and took him home. this was all over the weekend when no one was there mind you, but i did nothing illegal. fosters get first choice if they want to adopt their foster "kids", plus there was no "hold" on larry anyways.
so the next work day i explained to everyone what happened and they were very happy for us to have adopted larry as all had fallen in love with him also. the manager was on my side the whole time and the crazy family did come back in that morning, before adoption hours even, to inquire about the cat that they saw on saturday. the funny part was that they couldn't remember exactly what he looked like or his name, but they had to have him right now! so the manager talked to them some more and explained that the foster parents decided to adopt him and so on and offered to help them find another cat. she spent a good part of the day with them and came to find out that the daughter was allergic to cats and they had never had any pets before. i believe she convinced them that they should not adopt a cat at least not before they went to an allergist. they agreed and we never saw them again.
the rest is pretty much history :) i believe that our little orange and white kitty, larry, was especially made for me by God. i don't think i would cherish him so much if i didn't have to wait so long for my very perfect kitty. it was also good that he came along in my life when he did so that i was at a place where i had learned so much more about cat care and behavior that i could provide him with a good home. even though he's a little crazy sometimes and jumps on the counters we don't think we could've asked for a better cat than our larry beans :)
the beginning
p.s. my mom changed her mind about cats because larry is so awesome, and we did get a dog sooner than we thought and he and larry are bffs.
