I wear my Cat on My Sleeve

I am rescue.

Three words, three little words that have so much behind them. They mean strength, commitment, joy, but sometimes they mean fear, horror, and even sadness.

Rescue, it's what I do, it's who I am and it's why I love Diabetic Cats in Need so much, but it's not always easy. Those three words, sometimes I feel them and know I am rescue, other times I feel like a fraud, there's no way I'm making a difference, cats are still being surrendered, things aren't changing.

The cat who brought me to eventually find DCIN is gone now, but his spirit is still alive and strong and he pushes me every day to continue to rescue, even on those days when my heart hurts and I am not sure I can make a difference.


I've learned a lot in rescue, I've made friends that I hope will last a lifetime, others that have come and gone, I've been overcome by emotions both good and bad. Some rescues that I didn't think we could pull of we do and others that simply can't be helped. This past weekend we lost a young kitty named Dumbledore, only five years old, this sweet little man didn't have much of a life. Brought to the shelter weighing 25 pounds, can you imagine, five years young and so overweight. His give-up sheet, now that's a depressing thing to write, give-up sheet, well it said he was good with other cats. But what else? Why is he there? The shelter staff loved him, they had nothing but great things to say about him and when they learned of his blood clot and that he had to be let go they were heart broken. But why, why was he so overweight and why did he have a give-up sheet?

His DCIN case manager was heart broken, all of us at DCIN were heart broken. He was just five years old. What happened to him in his short life that made him so overweight, made him diabetic and eventually led to his death. How can we change that? Do we even have the ability to make a difference?

If we don't try, if I don't try, there will be no difference and the next Dumbledore will leave this world and no one will shed a tear for him, no one will have known.



The one cat who almost broke my spirit was Molly pictured above, she deserved a life and she was going to have one with me. I didn't know about her until after DCIN was told she was going to be put down. Venita posted about her wishing things could have been different, we often say "fly free" when we know their spirit will be flying to Rainbow Bridge and that day Venita posted a Fly Free post on felinediabetes.com about Molly whose time was about to end simply for being diabetic. She was actually a spokescat for a dry cat food when she was younger and now her people had simply given her up. Many members of the felinediabetes.com message board came together to try to rescue her and we came very close to getting her but in the end the shelter thought it was more humane to put her down.

From her loss another cat was saved. That same shelter took in a diabetic cat within weeks of Molly's death. This time they knew about DCIN and contacted Venita immediately and today that little man is mine, my love, my Sweet Potato and he is Molly's legacy and a testament to what love can do. If you read about him on the blog and you look at his pictures at the bottom and then you see him now, he's a different cat. He's a big healthy bouncy boy with more spunk and silliness than most cats. He came off insulin immediately and gained back all of the weight he so desperately needed.

Did I make a difference by taking him into my own home? I think so because not only is he alive and well, the same shelter wrote an article about him in its newsletter which you can see on his blog. Every person who read that article now knows that diabetic cats do get adopted and sometimes they go into remission. For every person who read that newsletter and didn't know a cat could even get diabetes, now they know and knowledge is power.

For whatever reason a person starts in rescue, one thing is certain, they do it wholeheartedly and they often wear their heart on their sleeve. I started that way and got trampled on, I cried for Molly and Dumbledore, for Martini who we didn't even get a chance to post about because his people gave us just days to find a spot for him and we did it in two, but they had put him down in one. So today I proudly wear a Cat on My Sleeve. For me that cat is Tucker, a senior kitty I adopted because he was cute and reminded me of my boy Sam, but it quickly turned into a rescue operation. His first day in my home I could see he was sick and that led me down a long path.

That path brought me here, to DCIN as a case manager and that path is still going, where it will lead, that's always unknown but on this new blog you will learn about cats in the Diabetic Cats in Need program, you will also hear from others who like me, they are rescue and they too make a difference.

Every rescue, no matter how small, it adds up. Every person who offers up a prayer for a kitty or its family, every person who shares a post or email to help another, every person who gives a moment of their time to help another, they are rescue and they are going to make a difference. I just hope we can wear our hearts on our sleeve someday, but for now, the pain is still there so here I am, wearing my Cat on My Sleeve.