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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Your rescue animal story

122 replies

splendidisolation · 03/10/2017 07:04

I went to this rescue woman's house and was greeted by the most adorable little white kitten you could imagine: a beautiful face, tiny little pink paws, she came right up to me and began nuzzling me, purring like a motorbike, lolling around for a belly rub, she was enchanting.

But then I looked up and locked eyes with a shaggy tabby cat. In her eyes was a look I can only describe as total fear. I asked the woman about the tabby amd was told she'd been rescued off a derelict building site, she had jumped into the car of the woman who was feeding all these strays. I went to go and pet her, M, and she allowed herself to be petred but ran behind the washing machine, trembling. They knew she wasnt born wild, and they thought she had been badly hurt by men, because she was now very nervous around men particularly.

I told my boyfriend I had to make a choice: this heartbreaker white kitten or a tabby cat with MH problems. I just couldn't get her terrified look out of my head and I knew that I would have the patience to help her. I knew I would regret not giving her a home, whereas the white kne would be snapped up.

Now she plays with my boyfriend and even sleeps on him. She also has a "brother" now - but he's a whole different story.

Please share your rescue stories! Attached is a pic of the now healed M 😊

OP posts:

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BlueSuffragette · 04/10/2017 00:00

Both my dogs are rescue. One very badly abused, has hernihernia on stomach from being kicked. She was rescued by charity who raised a horrible puppy farm. She was malnourished, bald in places and had a squint. Now 2 yrs later she is utterly adorable, the most loyal loving lap dog. She adores me, our other dog who mothers her and I absolutely adore them both. Don t buy a dog from a horrible puppy farm, rescue one and they will thank you and be the most loyal loveable dogs grateful for a second chance. People who buy puppy from breading horrible puppy farmsfarms just help to create places where vast numbers of dogs are abused to create profit.

AlistairSim · 04/10/2017 00:13

What a wonderful thread!
I wish I could "like" all your posts.

ladymariner · 04/10/2017 00:48

This is my beautiful boy, we got him as a kitten from a rescue centre 12 years ago. He's an absolute character, thinks he owns the street and us, and we love him!

WTAAF · 04/10/2017 01:42

I have 13 cats. Mainly rescue, very elderly or disabled (four only have 2 legs, one's deaf, a couple in their 20s). Today I got four kittens from a lady who had not coped with them at all - this makes 17 cat's. One has been injured by rough children I think. The older two of the four will be neutered as a matter of urgency. They're gorgeous. The plan is that we'll get them right and rehome them. Let's see how that works out... Before anyone thinks we are hoarders, we live as rurally as it gets, have the entire house structured around the pets and keeping a clean and cosy house and the animals are our world. Each pet is cherished and cuddled everyday except for our wanderers who spend their time terrorising the countryside before coming back to the fire. The 3 legged ex feral can fend for himself for a good couple of weeks before coming home for big cuddles and sleeping in our bed. I love our pets very much.

WTAAF · 04/10/2017 01:43

3 legs! I have no 2 legged cats!

Incitatus · 04/10/2017 02:46

I had been looking at the cat shelter website and came across this cat’s sad story. He was older and had been abandoned along with his companions. They’d been living in the basement of a really scruffy house and rescued by the rspca.

We went along to see him and he was terrified and we didn’t see anything of him apart from his wide green eyes. We agreed to have him and brought him home a week later. He was too scared to come out from under a cabinet we had in the bedroom, so I set up a base in there for him with food and a litter tray. I used to put YouTube aquarium videos on my iPad and slide them under for him to watch so he wouldn’t get bored.

Winter approached and it began to get cold so I persuaded him to come down into the lounge in front of the fire. He was so scared and would bolt his food and hide under the sofa.

Two years on and he’s completely rehabilitated. He loves the garden and potters about like he’s always been here. He even sits on my knee. He’s the loveliest natured cat there is

ThePlatypusAlwaysTriumphs · 04/10/2017 03:00

Loving all these stories - rescues are the best!!

I am a vet, so all my animals have come via some sort of "rescue". I have a 19yo one-eyed cantankerous old cat who came to us from a charity, hated the world, and lives at the surgery. He doesn't like anyone (so he says!) but we all love him! I have 2 cats that I hand reared from 1 day old, when their mum died and they were handed in. I promised my DH I wasn't going to keep them...5 years later they are still here..! I have a bunny that I rescued as a companion for my old bunny- I went to the spca and asked for the rabbit that no one else wanted..Our dog is a failed sheepdog, and we had another dog who I took on (incontinent moody bugger) who we lost 18 months ago and who I still miss so much! Dd has had rescue rats too (now departed). If it wasn't for DH our house would be bursting at the seams (think I have talked him into rescuing another like our last ddog though...)

AccidentalyRunToWindsor · 04/10/2017 10:22

@Ollivander84 how cute! 😻😻

Avonandice · 04/10/2017 12:06

All of ours have been rescued in one way or another,

Psycho cat came home with me when I went to collect a cotbed from gumtree. He was apparently due to be bucketed as the man loathed cats. They told me he was 9 weeks, vet aged him at 5 weeks, so I spent a month with him tucked into my top as he was such a fragile little dot. Now he's a hulking great lump who hasn't figured he is a cat, not sure what he thinks he is but its not a cat.

Skittles (rabbit) was advertised as an unwanted pet on facebook. Daughter raided her piggy bank, begged and borrowed what she could as she thought his face was sad, once we had him home we burnt the hutch, got the vet to shave off the matted fur, got him on a proper diet and he now follows DD round like her shadow and the pair of them curl up together.

Peanut and Princess(ferrets) were regimes from a rescue who would only say that once they collected the litter they were in from the house they were removed from, that it was the sort of place that you would expect to see on hoarders programmes. Peanut has never grown much beyond the size of a 9 week old kit and she never will as the start she had was horrific. Princess isn't much bigger but her attitude is about categorise size.

CoolCarrie · 04/10/2017 12:25

Gypsy is such a wee sweetie, I hope she goes from strength to strength with all your tlc Welsh!

AccidentalyRunToWindsor · 04/10/2017 18:26

@Avonandice bucketed 😿

My mum saved a cat that was due to he drowned. She went to get a kitten from an ad in the paper. When she got there she took the ginger boy but asked about the black girl. The woman said that she was so sickly her husband was going to drown her when he got home!

Mum took both and that little girl lived until she was 21, lasted much longer than her brother.

bbpp · 04/10/2017 18:40

When I was a child we kept a horse on a friends farm, and she had a lot of chickens. Being about 4 I stole an egg, took it home, and after my mum discovered the egg and consulted the farmer we set out on hatching the chick in our airing cupboard.

A couple weeks passed and there was no sign of a chick, so my mum took me to the rescue centre to get a cat.

Walked down into the basement of the rescue centre to find lots of cats in cages. There were kittens, and grown up cats cute and curled up, and a teeny tiny mental cat jumping 5ft in the air at the site of us walking in. I instantly fell in love with her but my mum tried to direct me to a calmer one.

Nonetheless, I won. She had been abused and had got pregnant young which stunted her growth, and kicked in the face (resulting in a broken jaw and lost teeth) and abandoned. She birthed and fed her babies, and then when another cat died during child birth she raised them, too. She was only 9mo when we came together.

We brought her home and she yowled all night as the chick tweeted, since it had decided to hatch. She's 17 now and the love of my life. The sweetest cuddliest grump ever (she won't sit on your knee, but loves to be carried) and I cry every time I think about her age :(

TheWitchAndTrevor · 04/10/2017 19:33

All our pets have been rescues.

Cats use to find Dh before we met. They were always older cats so sadly only had them a few years.

The first cat we got together, was for a companion for one of dh's. I rang the cat protection league, and said we would take the one that everybody over looks. We went to see Boris a semi ferrel (age unknown) long haired black and white cat. He'd been there for just over a year and wasn't keen on people. I fell in love with him instantly and put my nose up to his without even thinking, which was a stupid thing to do, and the CPL woman was hastily saying oh no! He can scratch! But to eveyone relief he just headbutted me back.

When he came home with us the CPL woman cried. He was the most loving cat I've ever had he follow me around the house, as soon as I sat down he was on my lap or round my shoulders. But he sadly died a couple of years later, because of a tumour on his liver.

We've had 4 other cats since him, loved them all, but he's the one that was just so special to me.

Gottalovesummer · 04/10/2017 22:19

thewitchandTrevor what a wonderful story. Lucky lucky Boris to have found you! Sounds like he was the most wonderful cat

TheWitchAndTrevor · 04/10/2017 22:23

I dug some pics out of him,

TheWitchAndTrevor · 04/10/2017 22:25

pinkcandy84 · 04/10/2017 23:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Sleepingbunnies · 04/10/2017 23:33

First rescue :)

I will get meore when DH isn't looking

Ollivander84 · 04/10/2017 23:43

pink he started doing it after I came back from hospital. Now if I say his name, he says mama. The worlds most ridiculous cat

pinkcandy84 · 05/10/2017 03:26

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster

splendidisolation · 05/10/2017 08:54

@bbpp

Yours is my favourite so far lookswise!

OP posts:

thetemptationofchocolate · 05/10/2017 10:08

There were at least a dozen cats in the pens when I went to choose 2 new cats. What I didn't realise was how they would choose me! I liked all the cats there but two of them (not friends or even in the same pen) made it quite clear that they wanted to be my friend. I was quite happy about that as I was having trouble making up my mind, so it was good that they did it for me :)

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