I am amazed by the courage of cats. We all know the story of Scarlet and how she continued to run back into a burning warehouse to rescue her kittens even through her ears were burned to nubs. But I am also in awe of the everyday, quite courage displayed by the cats in our lives - from Tak's Betty, facing pain yet still able to show her love to Tak, to my Bandit, who, though blind, continued to roam the house and take on all comers. There is another brave little girl in my life now...

Little Tayla was thrown out when she became pregnant - she was made to pay the price for her humans' stupidity, but she bore her kittens and cared for them as best she could on scraps scrounged from garbage cans (and her little body paid the price for her sacrifice, compromising her immune system and making her ill).

Tayla and her kittens were picked up by strangers and brought to a place with dozens of other cats trapped in cages all around her and barking dogs in the background (PetsMart's don training ring is kept right next to the cat adoption center!) The rescue personnel were pretty sure she was either treed by a dog or had to defend her kittens against one because she went ballistic whenever a dog passed by her cage - but *NOT* trying to run from them, she tried to get out and attack them!

Tayla was separated from her kittens as soon as they could be weaned (the rescue personnel wanted them to be adopted without the adopter "having" to take Tayla also - a cruel but necessary tactic to place as many cats as they can. She tried, at every opportunity, to escape from her cage and get to her kittens, but she watched them leave, one by one, until she was left there alone in a cage with no more hope of ever seeing her kittens again.

When I knelt down by her cage, she looked up at me with her green, green eyes and did not flinch as I reached out my hand to scratch her ears. She didn't try to escape her cage - there was no reason to now that her kittens had gone. She lay there resigned to her fate and watched me walk away and leave her - she didn't know I was only going home to get Ben to come and see her.

Tayla was put into a tiny cardboard box, and because the rescue was so busy had to stay in that box for over two hours (cats and kittens were coming in so fast they needed her cage). The cardboard box was then picked up and carried into a larger, noisy box, and then carried into a strange place smelling of strange cats.

I was expecting Tayla to dash out of the box when it was opened an hide under the nearest piece of furniture for at least a week or so. But Tayla surprised me again! She jumped out of her cardboard prison and immediately walked over to me and gave me a head-but! Then she walked over the where Ben was sitting on the floor and climbed onto his lap and rolled over onto her back for belly rubs!

Ever since we brought her home she has been loving, patient when we have to give her medicine, and purrs every time she sees either one of us. The only time I've seen her even look a little worried was when we had to put her in a carrier to take her to the vet - and even then she was calm and didn't panic, she just gave a few worried and inquisitive meows.

Tayla, after having been treated so horrible by human, after having by thrown out to fend for herself and her kittens, after being separated from her kittens, after all the scary things that were done to her showed me the greatest courage I've ever know - the courage to trust and to love again. I can only hope to live up to her faith in me and reward her love with as love as great as a mere human can give in return.

Copyright © Lori Crews
June 28, 2007