stray cat knocks on a woman’s door and asks to be let out of the cold
stray cat knocks on a woman’s door and asks to be let out of the cold.
A lady heard crying coming from her yard on Valentine’s Day. She came across an orange tabby cat standing in the snow, looking a little disheveled.
The cat pawed at her door, meowing for help.
The woman, a volunteer with Un Chat à la Fois, a Quebec kitten shelter, sent a message to Marie Simard with a picture of the cat. “She said she knew we weren’t taking adult cats and was looking for a way to save him,” Simard, creator of Un Chat à la Fois, told The Dodo. “It broke my heart as soon as I saw the photo, and I advised her to take him to our partner facility so he could be checked.”
“His expression said everything there was to say,” she added. “He lingered outside her door for a while, and when I asked him to take her, he didn’t try to run away.”
The vet determined that the cat did need help when he arrived at the clinic. He had bites, fleas and ticks on him, as well as frostbite, decayed teeth and diabetes. Simard realized that if the stray cat had not sought the care it so desperately needed, it would not have survived another harsh winter.
Despite its frailty, the cat was simply happy to be among people again. “He was quite friendly with the clinic staff,” Simard recalls. “At the vet’s office, he would take his paw out of the cage so others could pet him.”
Simard named the cat Aslan, after the lion in “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Aslan’s health improved after a few days of therapy at the clinic, and he was placed in a foster home, where he quickly made friends with his new mom’s cats.
Every day, Aslan let his foster mom know how grateful he was to be safe and comfortable.
Simard described him as “a very affectionate cat.” “He loves to sleep near his foster mom.”
When it came time to find Aslan a permanent home, his foster mom couldn’t bear the thought of separating him from his new sister, Cleo, another rescue cat. “He would just lie next to her, groom her, and she would groom him,” Simard says. “It made sense to keep them together – two rescue cats that had had a difficult existence.”
After a year, Aslan turned out to be the best valentine his family could have wished for.
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