LogFAQs > #946521590

Revelation34 posted...

How did you wind up with a cat that old?

A local fostering agency put up a courtesy post for a 15-year-old cat whose owner had died, since his roommates were moving and couldn't bring her along, and his family wanted nothing to do with her and planned to throw her out on the street (as a 15-year-old, front declawed cat who'd only ever lived indoors... you can guess how that would have ended). We were looking to adopt a cat, and aiming specifically for senior ones because they tend to be more neglected than kittens, so we expressed interest in her, figuring we'd probably be one of many.

A couple days passed and we ended up adopting another (8-year-old) cat from a shelter and figuring that was that, only to hear back from the fostering agency saying that we were the only ones who inquired about her. We figured it probably wasn't a great idea to adopt a second cat so quickly, especially where she was advertised as being best suited for a one-cat household, but we agreed to go meet her anyway to see if she liked us well enough to be worth a shot. We got there, and the house she was living in was one of the most disgusting shitholes I have ever seen in my life. There was moldy food sitting out everywhere with flies congregating around it, holes in the walls, tar stains in the carpet, the whole place reeked so badly of cigarettes that my breath smelled like an ashtray for a week, her litter box very clearly had not been cleaned in months because there was a foot-high pile of her poop in it, the family's idea of putting her out on the street entailed setting up a raccoon trap for her in her own house... We didn't even see her on the first visit because she was hiding, but we decided on the spot that we'd take her regardless of how she responded to us because we couldn't leave her in those conditions. We went back later that afternoon and actually met her, and she had an obvious eye infection and wasn't very happy to see strangers, but we took her anyway.

It took a while, but she eventually warmed up to us, despite a somewhat traumatic emergency vet trip that night (her vet records died with her owner, so we had no idea what that infection was or if she was FLV/FIV positive or otherwise dangerous for our other cat). Her hyperthyroidism didn't get diagnosed until a regular vet visit a few weeks later, but we got that sorted out pretty quickly, and now we've just got a periodically-cranky fat old lady with the voice of a lifelong chain smoker (think Estelle from Friends. That's her meow). We fully expected that she'd die shortly thereafter and we'd just have given her a few comfortable final months, but two years later, she's somehow still going strong.

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