Rescue Cats – Best Friend

They have been abandoned, neglected and abused. Society and irresponsible owners have forgotten about them. They are rescue cats. Taken in by animal welfare societies and they all need a loving home to literally save them from death row.

Their stories are all too familiar. Abandoned and left to their own devices, sometimes with kittens or with the gift that the novelty has worn off. One thing they all have in common is the fact that humans have let them down. Perhaps the once dedicated pet owner couldn’t handle the fact that his cat was now pregnant and expecting kittens. Didn’t they take the initiative to neuter their cat if they hadn’t already? Instead, the poor mother cat will pay for this, probably with her life.

I could go on and on about irresponsible pet owners who are responsible for the vast number of pets euthanized each year. But I want to shed light on having a ‘rescue cat’.

Since we hadn’t had a cat for about 20 years, our family was adopted by a beautiful tortoiseshell (yes, that’s right, I mean she adopted us!) who, after several weeks of capturing our hearts, made the fateful mistake of enter the neighbors garden. with big wild dogs.

We lost our princess to the wildlings and swore never to lose our hearts to a cat again.

Well that lasted about 24 hours before my husband called me and said “we need another cat”.

I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of ​​the neighbors’ dogs and the fact that cats loved to climb and no mountain was high enough for them. Lots of research revealed that most cats love to be indoors! Well, this surprised me as I had only seen stray dogs roaming the streets or cats curled up on terraces. So we set out to give a newcomer the best of both worlds. Our next cat would be an indoor cat with a tunnel leading from the house to the ‘Taj Mahal’ of outdoor cattery. A huge cattery measuring 6m x 6m running out of the side of our double garage. It has tropical plants under the covered roof section and soft sand for bathing and soft grass, benches and rocks for relaxing and sunbathing. What a relief to know that our newcomer would now have the best of both worlds for sure. No dogs, no car accidents or fights with stray dogs.

Now we could begin the search for our next beautiful cat. Within a few hours I had Googled every NSW breeder of Ragdoll, Himalayan, Persian or any other fluffy cat breed in NSW. No one had a kitten for sale. They told me it was a bad time of year for kittens. All we wanted was a fluffy kitty like our beautiful mutt!

Then an idea occurred to me: what about the RSPCA and the local animal shelters? Since we didn’t know much about cats, we naturally assumed that breeders were the way to go. But as we found out, animal welfare places are filled with all the beautiful cats you could ever want. Fluffy Persians, elegant Siamese and the common old tabby. You can find them all!

And this is where we found our first rescue girl. ‘Mercedes’ is a chocolate brown ball of fluff that was found abandoned at a work site with her kittens and a collar that had gotten stuck under her arm somehow. We took this little angel home and nursed her wound for a few weeks and watched her transform from a scared and wounded young mother cat to a loving and trusting cat that changed our lives completely. She has helped us discover what interesting, funny and majestic animals cats are.

Well a few weeks later we felt our princess needed some company so we headed back to the RSPCA and this time brought home a stunning fluffy tortoiseshell named ‘Poppy’.

Within a week, our two girls were the best of friends. A friend once told me ‘once you have a cat, you don’t stop’. I laughed at the time, but now I know he was right!

For the next 4 months, my daily visit to animal welfare websites saw us accept 2 more girls. Both are small replicas of the first 2. We are now the delighted owners of 2 fluffy chocolate brown beauties and 2 equally fluffy tortoiseshell princesses. And they are all rescue cats, with their own sad stories who have fortunately been given a second chance. But we all know that we, the owners of these majestic creatures, are the lucky ones, right?