I have four shelter cats and Chuck, a sweetheart who was abandoned when neighbors moved, and started sleeping under my house. I love them all dearly, but today I’m going to tell you about my Sally, the magnificent inspiration for The Sally Mitts stories.
Sally was dumped in a high-kill shelter with her five kittens. Mercifully she was saved by the Goathouse Refuge, a wonderful place I am writing one of the Sally stories about. She is a tiny (how did that tiny body carry five kittens inside?) tortoiseshell kitty, with beautiful swirls of orange, black, and sand every which way on her thick fur.
My friend Bill and I had been visiting the Goathouse Refuge with no intention of adopting. The cats there are free of cages unless they’re getting medical treatment, and they eddied around the floor in the main room. Shy and skittish, Sally was clearly intimidated by the much larger cats all around her. Yet she bravely made her way to me through the scrum of bodies, timid but determined to make contact. And we connected, an emotional bond happening that can’t really be fully described. There was something in me that drew her, and something in her that moved me.
Her eyes are very direct, reflecting her emotions openly. She really sees you with them. When I stroked her, she quivered and shook with the need to be touched. Then she disappeared into the crowd as food was brought out for the cats.
I asked a volunteer about her story. It seemed that all of her babies had been adopted in kitten hood. But as was the story of many of the cats at the refuge, nobody adopted the mother cat. And that made me angry.
The next time I visited the refuge I asked for her, but she was out in the lovely garden the refuge provides for the cats, and couldn’t be found. Her impression haunted me. The desire to bring her into my home grew until I knew I needed to act.
As it turned out, Bill and I adopted three cats from the refuge. Sally, J.C., and Harpo. The protocol was to keep them in large cages while they adjusted to their new space, and old Chuck adjusted to them. We followed this policy with Harp and J.C to the letter. But when I reached into Sally’s cage to deposit a food dish, Sally wrapped her whole body around my wrist and trembled. Her eyes pleaded desperately. I took her out and held her, gently stroking her soft fur. She purred so fiercely I was afraid the tremors rolling through her were a seizure. And Instinct took over. Instead of isolating her in the cage, I kept her with me on my bed that night, where she nestled into my neck.
Twice fear gripped her and she went to hide behind the toilet, rolled into a tight ball, her back to the room as if to make it disappear. I held and stoked her, calming her fear of the strange new home she was in.
And Sally flowered, revealing a nature rich in feistiness and tender, tender love. When the two boys, Harpo and J.C. chased her, she chased them back, triumphant in her prowess.
Unfortunately, as they grew from their adolescence into adulthood, bulking up while she remained tiny, they began to use their strength to bully her. For a while this dulled her comfort in her home, and she found a therapeutic outlet in pounding on a sisal rope strand, expressing her resentment until it was in tatters.
We are working on this unacceptable situation, and as the guys are learning to lay off Sally, she is coming back into her own as the comfortable kitty she is. It’s work, like everything worthwhile is.
And every cat is worth every second of work, which is love. My life has been immeasurably enriched by adopting these darlings. And Sally? Well, we are inseparable. Life without her would be so much less.
Visit a shelter. There are so many special souls looking for a forever home. Give them safety and love, and they will give you the precious gift of their hearts.
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This is a great story that Shain Stodt wrote about Sally, the cat who is the inspiration for a book that Shain is writing and illustrating. I find it rare that someone can capture in words what it's like to love and be loved by an animal, and in this short story she has done it.