How it all Began

It was the summer of 2002 when we adopted Flecki and Idi. We had just moved into our first house and I really, really, REALLY finally wanted to surround myself with feline energy once again. Growing up I always had cats but once I left home I lived in smallish apartments that wouldn't allow pets. Plus I was just so busy, adopting a furry friend hadn't really occurred to me.
I was so eager to go pay the Humane Society in Toronto a visit to see what's what. I kept nagged and pushing DH because I had this feeling that we would miss out on the two cats that were meant to live with us. "Let's go, let's go, let's gooo already!!"
So we finally did.
Looking around in the cat section of the shelter was heartbreaking. So many friendly felines looking for a good home. Some kennels had short bios attached to them. I tried not to look too closely as I would have taken all of them home. Suddenly DH shouted - and I'll remember those few words forever - "there's two in that kennel!" Bulls eye! Those must be ours.We took a closer look. Aha. Uhum. Crystal and Patches. Crystal likes to be brushed. She (who is now Flecki) paced back and forth in the little space, saying hi to everybody, doing all the "marketing". Patches aka Idi was one level below, just sitting there with eyes closed. We asked the staff how they ended up here. They wouldn't say, only that they "came as friends".
Long story short, we took the two home.
Little did we know that Idi was severely sick. She started puking and drooling about 12 hours after we brought her home. She wouldn't eat or drink. I guess that's why the staff at the shelter asked us numerous times to take them to a vet straight away. They did not tell us that Idi was sick. Kind of not nice. But we wouldn't go and return her now. It turned out that she had a severe inflammation of the uterus, most likely because she had been fooling around with some stray cat-lover. We took her to the vet who said that she was in really bad shape. She had to stay at the animal hospital for about a week and the staff there was very worried that she wouldn't make it. One of the girls even went over to the clinic at night to check up on her. How sweet of her! But what a nightmare. $ 2000.00 and 7 days later we decided to take her home. She was clearly suffering at the hospital, locked away all by herself. She is such a social cat and the staff noted how gentle she is and even though she was so sick she would always say hi whenever somebody entered the room. When we went to see her, she literally had tears in her eyes. I've never seen such a thing on a cat. She was miserable, lonely, cold (damn air conditioning cranked up to the max) and she just had to get out of there immediately, no matter what would happen.
Since she wouldn't eat or drink, she needed infusions and had to be force fed. DH and I shared those duties. The force feeding really got to me after a while. I felt that it was wrong, that no one should be forced to eat. But we also couldn't just let her starve. DH had better nerves and took on feeding duty. We must have done it for about 10 days and finally she started eating on her own.
Hurrah! She'd made it! It was a close call and I still refer to her as our miracle cat today.

Here a few photos of the two of them when Idi had just returned from the hospital. They hadn't seen each other for quite a while and sure had been through a lot of upheaval.

 Wow... they were so small and frail back then...

I almost forgot how affectionate they were with each other in the beginning. I still can't believe what's currently happening. Never, ever did I see this coming.