Rescue animals can enrich your life when you invite them into your home.
Anastasia M. Trakles
When I was a little girl, my mom and I were taking a walk in our garden in the small town of Interlochen, Michigan, and we heard a funny sound coming from the blackberry patch. We looked and found a beautiful Siamese kitten, not even 6 months old, rolling around in the dirt there. He was lonely and obviously far from whatever home he had come from, but he found a new home with us.
“Kublai Khan,” as he came to be called, enjoyed a great life of being a little girl's pride and joy. Some time later, he was joined by a stray black-and-white dog that was running loose one morning by our school bus stop. Before I got on the bus, I made my parents promise to keep “Roger” before I would get on the bus to go to school, which of course they did. We're a rescue family, after all, and Roger provided almost constant companionship to my mother in particular for nearly 20 years afterward. Today, between us, my parents and I have two dogs and six cats–all from shelters and rescues.
Rescue animals often have stories that their owners can retell in vivid detail. They make our lives more interesting, brightening our days and giving us the kind of companionship that can only come from a furry bundle of joy. But for every pet like Kublai and Roger, there are many others out there who are not so fortunate as to have a nice family to give them a home. Luckily, there are shelters, and the volunteers that run them, and many of those homeless animals find their way there, where they wait to tell their stories to potential adopters willing to come and grant them their dream–a “forever home.”
When a cat comes to the Independent Cat Society (ICS) in Westville, for example, we make sure those animals are vaccinated, nourished, and spayed or neutered, which is essential to ensuring that even more animals are not left in the wild to live difficult, often painful and unnaturally short lives. Our volunteers even work with local communities to spay and neuter the feral cats that live in their neighborhoods, barns and fields, to help ensure healthier lives for all cats, both “indoor” and “outdoor.”
We do not discriminate–whether a cat is 2 months or 20 years, if she needs a home, she has a chance at ICS. She may even wind up staying with us her entire life, as we are a “no-kill” facility. Not every shelter can make that commitment, for a variety of reasons, but many can and do, including many in Northwest Indiana. No-kill shelters ensure that every animal gets an equal chance at a new life, and our adoption policies reflect this as well, as we try to ensure that every cat that leaves our care is going to a safe, loving, and truly “forever” home. It's important to us that our cats go where they will be treated well–after all, why would they deserve any less?
So, why not come visit us, and learn the stories of cats like Zipper, Diva, Pluto, Corky and all of the others that claim ICS as their sanctuary while they wait for their own forever homes? You can find us at 4061 County Line Road, at the corner of County Line and U.S. 6 in Westville, every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. You can also learn more about how you can support our mission at www.catsociety.org, where we host information, an email newsletter, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a blog.
