Back 2009 I noticed a white cat with a flea collar wander through the yard every now and then. As time passed he became scruffier and thinner, so I started putting food and water on the landing of my apartment. A friend of my son saw him one day and told me that the people that owned this cat had moved away and left him behind. For the next 18 months I kept food and water out there for him; I couldn’t really get near him because he was very scared and skittish. One evening when he came up to eat, he had a large puncture wound in his head and and his head was very swollen. I was very worried about this because I couldn’t catch him to get him the vet, so I just asked God to please let him heal up with no complications, and he did. Every night I would sit out on the landing and talk to him even though he wouldn’t come near me. He adjusted to my presence there and sometimes he would fall asleep. He was so beat up, battered & dirty... and getting thinner and thinner all the time, despite all the food. One day, about 15 months from the time I first saw him, he came up on the landing and just looked at me. I called to him and said ‘come on buddy I promise I won’t hurt you,’ and to my great surprise he came up to where I was sitting and head butted my leg and didn’t run when I reached down to pet him. From that time on I made it my mission to try to get him inside because I was in the process of buying a house and I was determined he was coming with me. I finally was able to scoop him up one day and bring him into the house, two days later I had him neutered and the vet told me he was probably seven or eight years old. He had worms, he had fleas, he had seriously bad bladder inflammation & was a mess. Two days later he crashed out the second-floor window screen and disappeared. I was frantic with worry and when he finally showed up again I picked him up and talked to him. I told him ‘I’m moving away and you have to come with me because if you don’t, you will have no food, no water and no one to take care of you.’ He never broke eye contact with me and I really do believe he understood what I said, because he never tried to go out again. Fast forward now 10 years and he has never again been outside; he has no desire to go outside, he is content to be spoiled rotten & living indoors. Whenever the weather is really cold or rainy or hot and miserable, I look up and say thank you to God for letting me catch him, and that he is no longer out there trying to fend for himself. Since I didn’t know when he was born, I chose a birthday for him, I picked February 14 because Buddy is my heart walking around on 4 feet.

Teresa Haugen
GOOSE CREEK, SC