August Gotcha Day Story Contest Winners

I received about 30 entries for the August contest – Gotcha Day stories. All of these stories were so heart-warming, I cried several times reading some of  them, and laughed as well. I wish I could give out prizes to all who have rescued or adopted a pet…especially those who were in trouble.

Finally, I settled on two winners and one honorable mention. The winners are Celia Zeinert and Casey Hill. Honorable Mention goes to Anne Balthasar. Here are their stories:

Celia Zeinert: In fall of 2002, my husband (then boyfriend) moved to Madison, WI for college. Having grown up with cats my entire life, our new apartment seemed dull without a furry little friend to meet me after a long day of classes. One day we decided to check out the stores in the vicinity of our local mall, and we noticed a PetSmart. I told my husband that if there were cats there, I would like to look into adopting one. Somewhat opposed to the idea, my husband said “If there are cats, we can look at them. But we will only get one if his name is Gabe.” Thinking he had laid the whole cat issue to rest, we went to have a look inside.

Much to my husband’s dismay, there were indeed cats for adoption at PetSmart. We approached the cages only to discover that most of the cats were having an afternoon snooze. There was, however, one cat pawing frantically at the cage. My husband squinted to look at the name tag; as luck would have it, the tag said “Gabe.”. True to his word, my husband hailed the attention of a store employee who got Gabe out of the cage for me to hold. She placed him in my arms, at which point he hissed and scratched my arm to the point of drawing blood. We both decided that fate or not, Gabe would not be coming home with us.

A little dejected, I turned around to leave the adoption area. As I was about to walk out, the store clerk grabbed my hand. “Did you meet Tinker?” she excitedly asked. She opened up the cage directly to the left of Gabe’s and handed me a soft, beautiful and purring Siamese mix. She had bright blue eyes, tabby striped paws and calico ears. Her markings were almost funny, as though she had been crudely designed from the markings of ten different cats.

I held Tinker in my arms for nearly 15 minutes as the store clerk told us all about her past. She was a stray from Delavan, WI where she was found wandering the streets. She had no way to fend for herself, as her owners had declawed all 4 of her paws. She suffered from severe ear mites when she found herself at the shelter, but they were all taken care of by the shelter vet. One look at my husband, and I knew he felt the same as I did: Tinker was coming home with us.

When we picked Tinker up from the adoption center a week later, we immediately took her to the vet’s office for a check-up. All the vet techs absolutely adored Tinker and couldn’t help but give her treat after treat. When they attempted to hear her heartbeat through the stethoscope, they were unsuccessful as her loud purr was overwhelming. The veterinarian came in to examine Tinker and remarked about the strange way her eyes seemed to dart back and forth as though she were reading. He suspected that perhaps she had an inner ear infection, but this was not the case. He left the room and returned a few minutes later with a thick volume in his hands. Reading from the book, he explained to us that Tinker had a condition common in Oriental cat breeds called Congenital Nystagmus. The condition caused no issues for her and did not compromise her vision in any way; her eyes simply darted back and forth comically. Her nystagmus proved to be just another unique feature of her already unique appearance.

We took Tinker home, where she immediately settled herself in. Within an hour, she was sleeping in my lap. She also slept in bed with us that night, beginning the nightly occurrence of Tinker sharing a pillow with me and often snoring directly into my ear. She continued to charm us and visitors to our home for the next six months as the only cat. Those six months later we encountered another misunderstood Siamese mix at a local shelter. His name was Shamrock, and he was scared and thin. Though Tinker was content as an only cat, we couldn’t bear to see Shamrock at the shelter. From the moment Shamrock came home with us, he would be known as “Gabe.”

Tinker and Gabe did not have an easy acclimation. For Gabe, it was love at first sight. For Tinker, Gabe was simply a pest that needed to be eradicated. He would touch noses with her; she would bite him. So it went for several months, during which Gabe took to stress-licking his fur to cope with the rejection. My husband and I resigned ourselves to the fact that Tinker and Gabe may never be friends, but simply co-exist as neutral roommates (Gabe’s fur grew back as he resigned himself to this fact also.)  Therefore, it was incredibly surprising the day about six months after Gabe came home when Tinker jumped up on the couch to lay by him. It must have surprised Gabe too, because he let out a strange meow and ran from the room! After a few more unsuccessful attempts by Tinker, Gabe recognized that she was burying the hatchet and allowed her to lay by him.

Gabe and Tinker were inseparable from fall of 2003 until the beginning of 2009,  when Tinker was diagnosed with renal failure. Her disease was advancing more quickly than we could control, and the veterinarian did not have optimistic expectations for her long-term survival. When Tinker came home from the vet’s office after we received the news, Gabe hid upstairs for almost a week. If Tinker approached him, he would avert his eyes and slink away. He knew something was wrong; terribly wrong. She slowly regained her strength and Gabe slowly warmed back up to her. Things went back to normal for about three months, as we pushed the severity of Tinker’s illness from our minds .

In April of 2009, Tinker took a turn for the worst. She stopped eating and would lay unmoving in one spot for hours at a time. Her coat became dull, and her eyes had lost the glimmer of joy that they always held. As unprepared as we were, my husband and I knew it was time to say goodbye. Through a steady stream of tears and uncontrollable sobbing, I held Tinker in my arms while the veterinarian administered the euthanasia. As her body went limp, I whispered in her ear how sorry I was and how much I loved her. I really hope she knew.

Gabe and Tinker

Casey Hill: Odin is an amazingly special cat. Named for the one-eyed God of Thunder, Odin has a journey of a story which I feel compelled to share with those of you who are interested to listen.

Odin had a hard life at the beginning, born to an abusive, neglectful family, he was an outside cat who got more than his share of beatings from both animals and people nearby. Scars are apparent on his ears, and especially his nose, of past battles. However, Odin wasn’t brought into the shelter until his eye was shot out with a pellet gun, possibly by his previous owner or a neighborhood kid.

The shelter removed the pellet, but unfortunately his eye was lost. Our shelter isn’t innocent in some of the pain caused to him, however. The shelter obviously placed no trust in the fact that he would make it, because his eye wasn’t properly sewn, and they left in his right tooth, which was fractured from the impact, to abscess.

I saw images of Odin (called “Winky” by the shelter) on their website, and something about him pulled me. I begged my husband, who at the time didn’t want another cat, to at least let me go and take a look at him. He was about a year old at the time and still had the stitches in his eye when he was brought out to us. The woman handed him to my husband and he laid his head against my husband’s chest.

Call it love at first sight, the next day we were taking him home. He was clearly hanging on. A strong cat, he pulled through another surgery to remove the abscessed tooth and we discovered through the vet that his blood work returned with his blood sugar through the roof, meaning that not only was he suffering from his ordeal, he was diabetic.

My husband worried for ages that he wouldn’t make it, but I kept hoping, kept praying. I applied medicine to his eye to help it heal and kept a close watch on the spot where his tooth was.

Now nearly a year later, he’s gained to a healthy weight, his eye has healed marvelously, and his blood sugar is still maintained through insulin shots. He’s well behaved, never once fighting me while giving him shots. He sleeps on my legs at night, and purrs nearly every time I touch him. I believe that love, more than anything, kept us going, and has allowed him to be this part of my life.

Even after everything he’s been through, he’s still beautiful in my eyes. Some may cringe, but I look at him and see an angel.

Odin

Anne Balathasar:  This is a story about “Never Say Never”. It all started when my 10 year old son wanted a dog. My husband and I were never pet people. We liked animals, we just didn’t want any. I hate to admit it, we even occasionally rolled our eyes and made fun of people who did silly things for their dogs. We laughed and said “We would never do that for a dog.”
   
Needless to say, we decided to adopt a dog. After a lot of research, we decided on a rescue dog. It took a few months, but I wanted the perfect dog for our household. When we found one, we met with the foster mom to see if we liked the dog and if the dog liked us. Our lives have never been the same since that day.
   
When we first saw Pinta, she was sitting on a sofa. My son sat down next to her. She avoided him and kept inching away slowly. She didn’t jump off the sofa or run, she just looked so sweet and adorable. She was scared, shy and nervous, but she was beautiful to my husband and me. In my son’s eyes, she could have been 3 pounds or 120 pounds, it was a dog and she was coming home with us.
 
When we first decided on a dog, my husband and I told our son we had rules pertaining to any dog that comes in the house.
     
For example:
- The dog will stay off the furniture…As soon as we got home and let Pinta in the house, she jumped on the recliner. Well, she is scared and this is a new place for her. OK, she may lay on the chair.
      
- We bought a dog bed for her, she is to stay there…Now every morning I look over and her head is on my pillow stretched out between us. OK, who would pass up a queen-sized bed for a little round cushion. (The dog bed is now in the basement collecting dust).

- She will not be in the car. I do not want dog hair all over my pants….It is a funny sight seeing her head out the window with her tongue lolling about. OK, she would be
lonely at home.
      
- No table food, dog food only…I fully understand the term “Puppy Eyes.” OK, who would want to eat the same food everyday? (My husband is the one to blame for this, he started slipping her the table food.)

- Last but not least, I will not have a dog wear clothes. That is just plain silly…OK, it does get cold during the winter months in PA. She needed a sweater for winter and a t-shirt for those cooler autumn days. Just like she needed a denim hat to keep the sun out of her eyes when we go for walks.
   
Well, it turns out we are those people we made fun of before. I now realize that it is those that have not found the perfect pet that are missing out on a wonderful thing. I would never have guessed it could be like this. We now know to “Never Say Never.” Yup, we are doggone lucky to have Pinta!!