We are so grateful to our incredible, loving adopters who are the piece of this puzzle that makes all the effort pay off! It is a special treat when you take the time to update us and include us in your stories about the animals you adopt from FFL. Thank you Judi and Greg! Congratulations Mysty!
“Dear Friends For Life,
My husband and I, married 30 years, have always had cats. We hit our upper limit at 6 cats, and lived many, many years as a happy family. But as our furbabies began to age and pass away we decided that, “after the last one is gone, we’re taking a break!”
In February of 2013, we were down to two- Taz, age 17, and Pumpkin, age 19. Taz left us that month, and then, heartbreakingly, Pumpkin slipped away the following month.
We mourned terribly for many months, while at the same time reaffirming our determination to not adopt any more animals. We were too old, we reasoned; it was too hard on our hearts when they left; the mess and the fuss and the vet visits and the blahblahblah gave us excuses for not adopting again. But with just the two of us here in this great big house, things got quiet, and still, and the particular kind of energy and life that animals bring to a household slowly disappeared.
By November of last year, nine months after losing our precious Pumpkin, we were ready for a new furbaby. I went to your site and started browsing the beautiful photos of all the adoptable kitties and I found her! Her shelter name was Babe, and she was an adult, long-hair, smokey-gray beauty. I knew I wanted to meet her. We made the trek from Pearland, and introduced ourselves to “Babe”. She was very shy and very afraid of us, and only let me pick her up once we got her alone in the adoption lounge, but we believed that we could calm her fears in our quiet, loving home, so we took her home.
She had some emotional trauma at first- she was afraid of noises and of hands near her face, she paced the house and cried every night, and she seemed afraid to make the entire house her house. She restricted her movements to three rooms- the home office, the living room, and the utility room, where her food and water bowls are. She was healthy, but underweight (as you would expect a timid, reserved cat to be), and could go from calm to bitey in 0.0 seconds. Neither we, nor FFL, have much of a history for her, but based on her behavior those first few months, my husband and I think maybe it wasn’t such a pleasant life for her before she was left at the shelter.
Now, a year later, she’s thriving. We renamed her Mystique, Mysty for short, and slowly, over time, she has learned to not only trust us, but to love us as much as we love her. She’s now my little shadow, following me around the house and sleeping curled up with us at night. She has claimed every nook and cranny of the house as her own, and has gone from 9 pounds to 15- a weight her vet is very happy with. She is full of life and energy, and makes us laugh all the time with her antics. At 8 years old, she still behaves like a kitten, and loves chasing toys, charging up and down the stairs, and romping down the long hallways.
Thank you, Friends For Life, for helping us bring the life and energy of a very silly kitty back into our lives!
And so now, on our 1 year anniversary with her, here are a few photos of Mysty, Queen of the Household!”
— Judi and Greg