Hi Steemians!
Hope you are all enjoying the weekend, its a bank holiday this weekend so we aim to do as little as possible - inbetween getting things ready for our house move though!! As much as we are so excited to be moving to our dream house we have lived in our current house for over 8 years and shared so many amazing memories here, I was looking back through some photographs and its amazing to see how many amazing moments we have shared here. I found these shots of one of our cats the first time she went outdoors and thought I would share the story of how we got her!, I hope you enjoy it!
While we were shooting a wedding deep in the Yorkshire Dales we sat outside a remote pub on our break. It was a sunny day and we were glad to be outside! We hadn't say there long before this beautiful cat came and sat on my knee! We already had one cat and with a love of all animals I was so excited to see that this cat had chosen to come snuggle on my lap! After a while we noticed that she didn't look too healthy, and on closer inspection noticed that one of her paws had a big hole on the pad with some stones in it. It looked almost like it had been burned. One of her eyes was weeping and she looked under weight and a bit sad. We were so upset and our hearts were aching for her. We went inside and asked the guys who ran the pub who's she was, the replied saying that they had been trying to find her a home for over a year, with no luck. She slept in the soil beds of the pub and fed on scraps from generous people who gave her some, but the people in the pub couldn't feed her as it would have encouraged her to go inside which would have been a health risk. We were so sad to hear that this lovely cat had clearly been living rough for a long time, and also to know that no one wanted her.
We said that once we were done shooting this wedding, we would come back in the evening and if she was still there we would take her and give her a home with us. We were a little worried about what our other cat, who we have had since she was a kitten, would make of all this, but we really couldn't leave her. We went back to the pub in the evening and luckily she was still there. The pub owners were so grateful for us taking her and we asked if she had a name, they didn't know and had been calling her Guiness over the past few months due to her little moustache!
She sat on my knee the whole journey home and didn't seem to mind once, in fact it was almost like she was thankfull. We had to look up online how to introduce cats together and found out that separating them for a few weeks was the best option. We didn't really want to keep calling her Guiness, mainly because she was a female! So we called her Angel, after the pub we got her from - The Angel Inn. It seemed fitting! She was also such an angelic cat, only looking for affection and love. We set up one of our spare rooms and left her to get used to the surroundings. Over time we fed our other cat at the same time as Angel so that they both would get used ot the fact there were 2 cats in the house and that there was no threat to each other. It was hard knowing that she was an outside cat keeping her in, but we knew in the long run it was for the best.
After 4 weeks or so we introduced both cats to each other and although they didn't become best friends right away they didn't fight or harm each other once, so we were so happy! We were also quite nervous about letting Angel outside for the first time. We wondered what she would do , wether she would try and find the pub we got her from or not come back to us. We stayed outside with her for a long time and she didn't stray too far to begin with . She loved being in the grass and the garden and started sun bathing on the table! She looked so happy and it really made us fell so much better seeing her happy. We had taken her to the vets to have her checked out and to bandage her paw, it slowly recovered and now you wouldn't even notice that it was there in the first place! Her eye condition has cleared up and she is a much healthier weight. These shots were all taken the year we got her which was nearly 6 years ago now! We can't believe how the time has flown or can we now imagine life without little Angel. Every day she looks so grateful for a safe warm home, and inside with all the blankets and cushions she just loved to be on soft things, probably because she has spent her life living in soil outside. We are just so glad we took the chance to rescue little Angel and we love her so much!