The Kitten That Adopted Us

Twenty three years ago my wife & I had been married two years and had been in Alaska for a year. In our first year there we had adopted a husky and an angora mix kitten. We, my wife more than I, were feeling guilty about leaving our kitten home alone when we took our husky out to explore Alaska. Valentine’s Day was approaching and I decided to add a playmate for out kitten to my wife’s gift. I went to the shelter to look for one and looked through all the kittens they had. I had selected one and was filling out the paperwork to have them hold it for me as it was not ready to be adopted yet. As I was walking out of the cage area, a tiny calico that would have fit into my hand, reached through the wire of the cage, pawed me on the shoulder and let out a pitiful mew. I melted, cried and asked if I could take her home.

Sascha, the name we gave her, not only adopted me, she even adopted our husky. We had an oversized show kennel that we kept our husky in when we weren’t home and anytime she was in there and the door was open, the calico would go in and sleep with her. I even had to cut one of the bars out of the bottom of the cage and there were many days we would come home from work and find her in the kennel curled up with the husky and both of them asleep.

After our children were born, she took to them as well. She was VERY tolerant of being cuddled by them even when they were young. My son, in the picture, would lie on the floor and use her as a pillow while he watched his videos. She never as much as bared a claw at the children, no matter how much they “loved her up”.

As she got older, she developed diabetes and required insulin injections twice a day. She was so tolerant of them, if she happened to be purring at the time you were going to give her injection, she never stopped. We had eleven wonderful years with her before her kidneys shut down.
The little boy in the picture is now a young man headed to basic training and then to serve in the Navy.
She’s been gone for a while now but looking through the photos when our church was preparing a photo montage for all the graduates this year made me a little nostalgic and grateful to have had such a sweet kitty in our lives.

— Chris in Helena, MT