TBC

Houston, Texas, USA

My full name is Tiger Bell Cat, but the human who lives with me just calls me Tiger, or somtimes "His Orangeness." I was dropped off at a local shelter when I was about nine or ten weeks old, and was kept in little box in the surgery for two months because I was so small, and had ringworm when I was brought in. The first day I got out of there and into the big room with all the other cats, a human showed up wanting to be adopted. He had been there a couple times before along with Auntie Shirly - one of the volunteer ladies, who was a friend of his - but hadn't found the "right" kittee.

When he saw me, he thought right away I was one of the handsomest cats he'd ever seen, and asked to see me. I was asleep at the time, but woke up when they handed me to him, and the first thing I did was sneeze all over him. He made a joke about "it's people who are supposed to be allergic to cats" but didn't think much more of it.

I was pretty groggy though, and just hid under a table and wouldn't want to play with him or the other kittees, so after a while he decided I wasn't the right cat either so they put me back in jail, and he looked at some of the others. I realized I had to do something special, so I cried and cried until he looked around and said "Who's making all that noise?" When he saw it was me, he stooped down by my cage and stuck his finger in for me to lick, and I sneezed all over him AGAIN. This time he casually asked one of the shelter people if I was coming down with a cold. I was, but they hadn't even noticed, so I COUGHED in front of them - then they knew!

They took me out and handed me to him again while they gave me some pills, and I then went to work on him, climbing up on his shoulder and everything. Everybody said "Awww" and he knew that sick kittee or not, I had chosen him, so he said if they would watch me for a few days and didn't get worse, he would like to have me. They called him back a few days later and said I was doing OK and would recover faster at home, so he came to get me. But when he got there I still sounded like Darth Vader, and was coughing up fluid and scratching real bad so he took me right to the Vet, who cleaned out my ears, and gave me a lot of medicine, and found out I had a tape worm too and some other bad stuff. It took about six weeks to get me all fixed up but I am much better now, and very happy that he came along when he did, or I might never have got a home and they might have had to send me to the Rainbow Bridge like they did my friend Punkin who wasn't even sick.

That's my rescue story and that's the truth.