Animal Rescue Stories

Butters

Coming home from work each day, I would be stuck in the 5 PM traffic. As I am sitting in my car, from the corner of my eye, I see something running in the bushes by the freeway off ramp just a couple of exits from my home. Hmmm... it was so quick I wasnt sure if I really saw anything. Was it a bag blowing? Or a flying piece of trash? Well, I moved on. I was home in 15 minutes and off to start dinner for my family.
That night as I laid in bed, I started to think about it again. I couldn't even fall asleep. I knew I should have pulled over and checked, but I didn't. So the next morning, I cut up some of the left over chicken breast, put it in a bowl. Got a second bowl, filled it with water and left 30 minutes early to hop on the freeway, drive out 4 exits, hop off, go back onto the freeway back towards my home until I got to where I thought I saw a dog.
I hopped out, and looked around a bit calling out "here doggie doggie doggie" but nothing came. So I set the bowls down the furthest from the freeway. On my way home, the bowls were empty. This became my morning ritual until she finally came to me. This filthy, pregnant little girl! After bathing her, I named her butters like the color of her fur!

Tamila Mendoza
ANAHEIM, CA

the day we rescued each other

One day a kitty chose our garage to move into. He was very friendly grey cat. We put up lost cats signs, but by the end of summer, no one had claimed him. I thought, I always wanted a kitty but was allergic for most of my life, but decided to try anyway. Took to vet to make sure he was ok and free of fleas and ticks. He was he moved into my home and my heart. Found out he was almost a year old and a Russian blue which turned out go be a hypoallergenic breed thus he became a dream come true for me. He has been my savior for years and hopefully many more to come. He needs me as much as I need him, thus we rescued each other.

kim
WATERTOWN, WI

Mommy's Little Cupid

My two fur babies are Lily and Iris, mother and daughter. Lily was pregnant when taken in my the local chapter of the Humane Society. Iris was born on Valentine's Day. As soon as Iris was old enough to be adopted out, I took both girls home. Does it get any sweeter than this?

Ivy
HENDERSONVILLE, NC

Aggressive to impressive

Cannoli was trapped by a rescue group on the streets of Los Angeles. He was both human and dog aggressive. The first rescue gave him to a second rescue because he was so difficult. The second rescue couldn't deal with him either, so they gave him to me. Weeks and weeks of patience and trust building resulted in a happy, good natured dog who doesn't like people, but tolerates them. He still hates other dogs, but you have to pick your battles.

Catherine Turley
ORANGE, CA

'It was a dark and stormy night'!

'It was a dark and stormy night'. It truly was! I was living in the U.S Virgin Islands in an isolated house surrounded by jungle. There was a storm raging, with torrential rain, thunder and lightening when I was awoken by insistent howls at the french doors of my bedroom. Illuminated by the flashes of lightening, I could see the outline of a cat. I already had three jealous cats, what to do? I opened the doors and in he came. I decided that the laundry room was the only place to put him and so dried him off, brought him some food and made him a bed. I left him to return to bed but he cried so loudly that I ended up spending a sleepless night on the floor whilst this very large cat wrapped his paws firmly around my neck and proceeded to rub his face against mine whilst loudly mewing and purring. This he did all night without cease.
To my surprise he calmly integrated himself into my cat community with no problem. I called him Cyril Magnum, he was truly the Budda of cats. The most loving and beautiful boy. On three different occasion he went back to the jungle reappearing with another cat for me to care for. When I returned to the U.S. He came too, of course. He lived a long and happy life and was adored by all the other quarrelsome cats. I will forever miss him terribly.

Penelope Allingham
BRUNSWICK, GA

Silver Boy

I was recently retired, and now able to spend more time with my house full of adopted cats, but something was missing! I decided I needed a little dog for a companion to go for walks and rides with me. I casually mentioned this to an acquaintance when she asked me how my cats were doing. She told me she had a little dog she would like to give me. She said he was sweet, but he was a nuisance to her because she had no time for him. She kept him crated all the time. She also made sure I knew he was not housebroken. Undaunted, I agreed to take him. She brought him to me the next day. When she opened the car door, he ran straight to me and has stuck to me like glue for over 10 years now. Silver, as I renamed him, was only 6 months old at the time: a silver-gray miniature poodle and chihuahua mix, he was 7 pounds of adorable and full of love. He fit right in with my cats--nobody blinked an eye. I found out he was completely housebroken, and I have never had a problem of any kind with him. Silver is still the same size as he was since the day I got him. We have fewer cats now, so he is a little more firm with them about his place on my lap than he used to be. We walk every day, he sleeps with me every night. He is the only dog I have ever owned in my adult life, and the best dog I have ever had. It will be very hard for me when his time comes, but for now, he acts the same as he did when he was 6 months old. I highly recommend any poodle mix, and would have one again. I don't know if I'll be lucky enough to be given one though. Silver was a gift--the best gift I have ever been given.

Diana Covington
TACOMA, WA

Peanut

I am a dog person, or so I thought.....
We arrived at our vacation cabin in Tennessee in October and as I got out of the truck I heard "Meow". There sat a skinny but beautiful black cat, which was appropriate since it was just five days before Halloween. Of course my husband fed her and soon she was sleeping in his lap. We decided to take her to a vet to board her until we left to return to Virginia and found out she had a microchip. It wasn't registered to anyone but the vet knew which shelter she had been adopted from and was able to get the number for the person who had adopted her. They called her and left her a message that they had her cat but she never returned their call.
So, on Saturday morning we brought her home. It's taken the 3 of us awhile to get used to each other but I am so glad we adopted her. We named her Samhain, pronounced sah-wen, which is the Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, October 31 and November 1. That was the date we decided we were keeping her. But we call her Peanut, which is the name my husband called her when we first met her.
She is a true rescue and if we hadn't found her when we did, she wouldn't have survived. We'll never know why or how she came to be at that cabin, but we believe it was meant for us to make her a part of our family. God truly works in mysterious ways.

Claudette
VINTON, VA

Shimmy, Shimmy Ko Ko Bop!

I found This adorable 5-month old kitten hiding behind my wallunits. He must have come in the house through my cat door. I like Irish names for my cats and so he became Seamus. Seamus is Irish for James; Jimmy is the diminutive for James; so I often just called him Shimmy. And so I'd sing the old Little Anthony & the Imperials song to him, Shimmy, Shimmy Ko Ko Bop! Shimmy Shimmy Pop!
Shimmy was the best little hunter; he would raid a vole nest and bring me a new one every day. He was always up for a little fun with the older cats. He became quite a large cat and, sorry to say, developed diabetes. While we were working on that, he developed a fast-spreading cancer that overtook him and, sorry to say, we lost him. After he passed we sent him on to the Purdue lab for study. Hopefully his pain will help them find ways to save other cats.
I'll always smile when I think of Seamus leaping out to throw a little scare into me or one of the other cats. We miss him.

Kitty
FORT WAYNE, IN

Forever Grateful

I never intended to become a pet parent again. I had buried enough of them over the years. So when an eight week old tuxedo kitten showed up at my back door, I was ill-prepared but I could not say "no". A few days later, a friend commented that my new family addition had a face that reminded her of Michelle Pfeiffer, and just like "that" Pfeiffer had her name. A short few weeks later she nearly died from a pre-existing parasite in her neck, but the vet tech said she had never heard a kitten purr so loudly as when Pfeiffer spied me coming to take her home after a three-day hospital stay. From that point on, we were virtually inseparable. It would have been difficult for an onlooker to tell who was having more fun when we played together. And of course, her favorite place to sleep was somewhere on me. If she was bored while I was at work, she would entertain herself by opening my drawers and pulling out my socks and underwear, and I discovered she was equally adept at opening kitchen cupboards to look for other items of interest, e.g.....food! Her cleverness more than made up for her small size, and I looked forward everyday to coming home and finding her waiting for me at the glass door. We read books together , watched birds and squirrels as we sat side-by-side , and there were countless games of tag- you're- it through the years. She never failed to lift my spirits. As she got older, our activities together perforce changed somewhat but our devotion to each other never did. We were connected on a level I'll never fully understand, but which will always fill me with a sense of wonderment. It was 2 moves and 16 years later that she mysteriously became ill. There were repeated visits and some overnight stays at the animal hospital in addition to several rounds of testing, yet she never complained. She only showed her appreciation at being home again. Her Veterinary team was able to make a diagnosis of either IBD or intestinal lymphoma , we simply couldn't know for sure without an invasive biopsy. At this point , she was on a special diet and was taking three different medications to treat her symptoms and make her comfortable. Twice she had to receive sub-Q fluids at home for a week at a time, and I had thought sadly that Pfeiffer might have reached the end of her stay with me. Still, she never complained. And twice she rallied to stay at my side. Such was the greatness of her heart. Pfeiffer made it to her 17th birthday. I didn't think she would, but she surprised me and I believe she did her absolute best to stay as long as she could... for me. But three months later, it was finally her time to go. And so, last August we went on our final car ride together. Though I have suffered the loss of my best friend of 17 years, there is one thing I know for certain: Pfeiffer may well have been a " rescue", but she was the one who saved me.

J. Phelps
TRAVERSE CITY, MI

He was meant to be with us.

I've had cats my whole life. At one time, we had 8 rescue cats and was also helping a stary mom and her litter. Over the years, we've lost all but two of them to something: cancer, kidney failure, just to name a few. My 17-year-old Cotton passed away on a Friday. We were devastated and our old cat Mic was grieving as well. We decided we did not want another cat. We have two senior dogs and Mic was well over senior age. Three days later, Mic brings home a very fat, fluffy cat that we thought to be female because of the affection we witnessed between them. The cat was feral. We could not even get close to it. We watched them playing and loving on each other and were trying to decide what to do about taming this very pregnant female when kitty rolled over and we found that he was actually male. While this was a relief, we needed to be able to get closer to him to get him to a vet for a check-up. Kitty became very sick with a viral infection and the only way I could help was to get antibiotics from the vet and add to food that I would leave for him and hope he ate. I would leave the food in a sheltered spot for him and watch him eat from afar. I was sure he wasn't going to make it. But he did and he continued to come around more letting me get closer and closer. I had to lay on the ground and push his food away from me and just stretch my arm out so that it was near the bowl. This went on for months. Then one day, he and my cat Mic got into a fight with a huge tomcat and kitty was pretty beaten up. This was the only way I was even able to grab him and get him inside. I secluded him in our laundry room and again, gave him meds through his food until he healed. During this time, he began to make his way out and socialize on his terms with me and my two dogs. After about a week, he was ready to go to the vet to be neutered and vaccinated. We were supposed to keep him for about a month after his procedure but I was afraid he may run away so we waited for about 2 months. He became the sweetest, most loving and grateful kitty I've ever known. He is still skittish with strangers and strange voices or noises but he loves his family. We named him Benjen and he's been with us for 4 years now. He's missing a few of his front teeth so sometimes his tongue slides out but it makes him so cute and unique. He's also very fluffy but his fur thickness and color changes with the season. He helped me remember why I do rescue, as I had done so many times before him. He's also showed me how affectionate cats can really be!

Leslie Winkler
SENECA, SC