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I started seeing a little striped gray kitty hanging around my house, and I could tell she was starving. Whenever I saw her, I’d quickly take a bowl of food out to her. We have a canoe out back covered with a tarp, and I noticed that she was taking cover under the canoe, so I put some straw down and some old blankets.

CAT. PHOTO: PIXABAY / RIHAIJ

That winter, a cold snap hit us, 50 degrees below zero, and I looked for her desperately. My next door neighbor told me she was under their house, so I started bringing a bowl of warmed up wet cat food to her every day, as well as a warm bowl of fresh water. She’d meow at me but kept her distance. I would cry every day for her, because 50 below zero is not only cold, it hurts.

Eventually the weather broke, and one day she just walked up to me meowing and hissing. I reached out and touched her. She let me pet her, and since then, she’s my baby. I just adore her, and I took her to the vet for shots and a wellness check. She had worms, which we treated, and she’s so happy now that she’s found her forever family! The vet checked for a spay scar, but she doesn’t have one. I’ve known her for three years now, and she’s never gone into heat or gotten pregnant. So I decided not to put her through the surgery. We think it might be because the starvation she suffered through may have damaged her reproductive organs, we’re not sure.

PHOTO: LORI LAKY

She’s tiny though, no more than five or six pounds, with little paws the size of a kitten's. I just adore her, and I had my boyfriend build a little house for her in our garage with a heating pad and portable heater for winter. She’s quite comfortable in there. She does still stay outside but doesn’t wander too far away, and we live on a dead end street with very little traffic. And of course, she can get into our garage through a secret passage way we made for her. The canoe is still in our yard, and occasionally I’ll see her in there.

She kills a few mice here and there that venture into our yard but has never gone after any birds or squirrels. Every night after supper, my boyfriend and I go sit outside around our fire pit, and she sits on my lap, and gets brushes and lots of loving pets.

Story submitted by Lori Laky from Reedsburg, Wisconsin.

This story was originally shared on The Animal Rescue Site. Share your very own rescue story here!