Forever In Our Hearts

It’s said that the New Year is the time to celebrate a new beginning, to unfold new horizons and realize new dreams, but it's also the time to take a look back over the past years and correct injustices, if there were any. Something that’s been bothering me for

quite some time, something I feel guilty about, is that nothing has yet been written about Oset’s passing a year and a half ago. He somehow remained unfairly forgotten, as if he had never existed, as if he had been unimportant and had never been loved by anyone. But

in my heart he will live forever and I feel I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for everything he brought into my life and for all of the love he had given over the years. He deserves a loving last goodbye, a final token of appreciation, an everlasting tribute to keep his memory

alive.

Oset was found as a tiny kitten, a light pale, golden little guy with beautiful, luminous, wise eyes and a slightly sad and serene gaze. He had always looked a bit different, somehow older and more sagacious than the

other kittens, as if he knew and felt something they didn’t. Although I didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself, from the very beginning I couldn’t shake off a vague feeling of unease over his future and a strange foreboding that he would die young. There was some deep sadness in his eyes…

He appeared out of nowhere, skinny and very hungry, in the middle of summer. I guess some children from my neighborhood had found him and carried him around until

they got bored and then they left him in front of my garage. He was too friendly and much too trusting for his own good, so I took him in, knowing that outgoing and affectionate kitties usually don’t survive long on the street. He loved all of the other cats and they all loved

him back, but when Augusta arrived, just a few days after him, she became the light of his life. They were inseparable from the beginning, one soul in two bodies.

A couple of months later, Oset disappeared and was nowhere to be found.

I was looking everywhere, desperately searching the entire neighborhood and found no trace of him. Augusta was refusing to eat and just waited for him with a blank look in her eyes, wrapped in her own misery. After a few sad weeks, I got a call

from a friend who told me about her new pale ginger kitty and I knew instantly it was him, I knew Augusta’s waiting was finally over. When I brought him home, they were both sparkling with sheer happiness and the joy of their reunion was so overwhelming that

it can't be described in words. It seemed that nothing could ever separate them again. They had their whole lives ahead.

When we moved to the shelter, many kitties estranged from each other but not Oset and Augusta. Their love was

flourishing, stronger and more vibrant than ever. They were joyous and playful, cuddly and sweet. Although Oset was a bit skinny (he had always been bony and delicate), he looked perfectly healthy. The tragedy that was about to happen could not be foreseen, there

were no warning signs at all.

Fate struck right out of the blue. On a lazy summer day, when all of the kitties were just resting and enjoying the sun and the warm air seemed to shimmer, I suddenly heard a cat crying in the yard. I rushed out

of the house at breakneck speed and found Oset lying in the grass. He was breathing heavily and unable to get up, with a totally distraught, panic-stricken and almost hysterical Augusta beside him. Before I could even try to take him to the vet’s, in just a few

short minutes, everything was over. My precious pale golden boy, so loving, so young and so beautiful, was gone and gone forever.

Time is passing rapidly by, weeks turn into months and months into years but my memory of Oset is

still crystal clear and as vivid as it was at the time of his death, now a year and a half ago. But it wasn’t just Oset that died that day, something inside Augusta broke and never returned, something inside of her disappeared forever. Her love for him was larger than life and when she lost him, she lost herself. Oh yes, she is still here, she is doing more or less everything that any cat does, yet she is nothing but an empty shell of her old self. She is not interested in other cats, she is not interested in humans, she is

not interested in much of anything anymore. She doesn’t live, she just endures life. But maybe in her dreams her beloved pale golden soul mate comes to comfort her and to show her that he never really left. Maybe those dreams are what help her hold on.

You will always be missed, my beautiful golden boy. The kitties will never forget you, Augusta will never forget you, and neither will I.

“When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure”.

Happy New Year!

Dear friends, we wish you all a very happy, prosperous and healthy New Year! May the sunshine of hapiness always shine above you! May you have a great year and a wonderful time ahead!

Miracles Do Happen Sometimes

Although collars are a necessary accessory for dogs, they might be somewhat problematic and of questionable use in cats. A lost pet who is still wearing a collar and tag bearing the owner’s name and address on it can easily be identified and reunited with its

owner, but unfortunately most people don’t react at all when they see a cat wandering around with a collar – they usually think it’s someone’s pet cat that will return home shortly, on its own. Many cats do not tolerate collars and they would do

anything to get them off, including hours of clawing at them, throwing their bodies against the walls, rolling on the floor and yowling in their owners’ faces. The collar itself can be helpful in identifying a kitty, but cats with collars can also get terribly stuck and

literally hang themselves trying to get free. A safe cat collar that is a quick release one, minimizes that risk and is therefore highly recommendable, as it easily comes open if a cat gets caught on something.

The worst-case

scenario occurs when a kitten or a young cat is abandoned and still wearing a collar. A collar does not expand as the kitty grows and if it’s not regularly checked and loosened as necessary, it can grow into the kitty’s neck. It causes a gaping wound that is prone to infections

and is always accompanied by excruciating, constant pain. Ogrlicar knows everything about that kind of pain; he experienced abandonment as a youngster and had been wandering around for months, with the collar too tight and embedded in his neck.

He was about eight months old when I ran into him for the first time. Emaciated, skittish and scared, like any other stray cat I’d been rescuing for years, he in contrast to all of the others, was wearing a collar. In spite of the collar, he was obviously a

stray, he’d been roaming around abandoned and all alone for quite some time. Betrayed once by someone he trusted and loved, he was impossible to catch, as if he decided not to approach a human being ever again. After the ultimate betrayal, it is

not easy to learn to trust again and Ogrlicar wasn’t even willing to try. He was fearful and distant and it took me almost a year to be able to touch him. By then, the damage was done. His collar had already grown into his neck, leaving him practically unable to

swallow food, in pain and total misery.

He was taken to the vet’s immediately, his collar was removed, his wound cleaned and a medical treatment with antibiotics and pain control medication started. I’d been putting a special ointment for wound healing onto his neck for weeks and he was slowly recovering. His wound didn’t heal fast, but it healed properly. And in these times of trouble and pain, he finally accepted me and the strong bond of trust and

affection has formed. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Ogrlicar is now a four-year-old tom, at full size and strength. He is cuddly and loving with me but not very friendly when there are other people around, as he has not

yet completely overcome his initial distrustfulness. Maybe the final trace of his misfortune is his shyness in the presence of strangers, but he is getting more relaxed with each passing day and is otherwise very self-confident. He has finally become what he was always meant to be, a powerful, dazzlingly beautiful tom that shines with a youthful energy and strength while thriving in a place where he feels secure and loved. He is living the kind of life that every cat deserves, a life that he could only dream of. He has come a

long way from the cold city street where I saw him for the first time, and the joy on his face, the sparkle in his eyes and the smoothness of his healthy gait are the best proof that there’s always hope.

Merry Christmas!

We wish you all a very merry Christmas! May magic fill your days all your dreams come true!

The Never-ending Issues of Shelter Repairs

It seems like we’ve been repairing the shelter for ages, fixing things up and making some changes, but after eight months the repairs are nowhere near completion. If we had had more money from the beginning, repairs would have probably gone better and

faster, but there’s no point in lamenting over the past. We were just trying to make the best of what we had and no one could possibly do more.

Instead of replacing the entire roof, which would have been a very costly, but only permanent solution, we managed to install additional supports and strengthen the roof of the main building. We hadn’t even touched the roof of the auxiliary rooms in the backyard. And now, when the tremendous amount of snow we recently got

started to melt, it's turned out that the roof of the food storage room has begun to leak. Some of the roof tiles have been torn off due to extremely high winds and a large puddle of water has just appeared on the floor. The ceiling was soaking wet, the walls were soaking wet and all of the bags of dry cat food and cans were covered in water droplets.

The sudden amount of water released by the melting snow was enormous and I’ve spent days sucking the water out.

Frankly, I knew something bad was going to happen, it always does, I just didn’t know what or when.. Boy, was I right! Not such a great way to start the holidays.

Construction workers who were inspecting the roof told me that

the entire structure is worn out and some of the roof rafters and beams are cracked and half-rotten. The old roof tiles, partially covered in moss, are moving and sagging. The entire roof of the auxiliary rooms is in the exact same shape the roof of the main building was in a few

months ago! It’s not really an unexpected discovery but nothing can be done now, so the roof will have to try and hold up until next spring.

And that’s not all. Just when everything was going so well, the rain started and the downpours quickly

turned the backyard into a swampy mess. Brilliant. I’m now becoming sadly aware that we still have a long way to go before the shelter is fully repaired. An old house is obviously a bottomless pit and problems appear one after the other, but rather than indulge

myself in hypothetical scenarios, I’ll think of some way to fix everything once and for all as soon as possible.

Not all of us are worried. While I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what to do, my intrigued kitties are

wandering around inside the food storage room, climbing wet carriers, ignoring puddles of water on the floor and enjoying entering the forbidden zone…

The True Beauty Resides Inside

It’s quite difficult to take good photos of black kitties and capture their beauty. Moreover, it’s definitely not easy to truly see the exquisiteness of their faces and their facial expressions are also hard to read. Although most of them have amazing, astonishing personalities, black cats are often stigmatized and surrounded by superstitious stupidities and the fact they usually appear somewhat faceless in the photos doesn’t help in debunking the false myths.

Negro now has a unique physical trait – his left ear is kind of crumpled. He had a hematoma on that ear last summer and surgery was performed, but his ear has fallen down and remained bent in half. It must have been very painful while his ear was swelling.

Since the infection has been resolved he obviously hasn’t been feeling any pain at all and his problem is now purely a cosmetic one. However, he didn’t lose any of his charms as there’s beauty in asymmetry, and it’s said that scars just remind us of where we’ve been,

they don’t have to dictate where we’re going. Negro, my special and lovely boy, is going down the right path.

He was only three or four months old when he appeared on the roof of an auxiliary building, and was entirely too scared to

jump down on his own. I had to get him down and bring him home, where he found two friends of the same age – Tigi and Treca Sreca. All three of them had been picked up over just a few days and they quickly became inseparable. Once he’d settled in, Negro

wasn’t really eager to go outside and even when he did, he was very distrustful towards people and didn’t come close. Being black, he was always at special risk on the street and his cautiousness helped him survive. On the other hand, he was a completely different

cat when he was inside – kind-hearted, loving and rather talkative, a real sweetheart.

Time goes by and it’s been eight or nine years now since I saw him for the first time, a frightened little boy, all alone and confused in the cold cruel

world. He might have forgotten where he started from, yet he’s still shy and doesn’t think that all people are trustworthy. Since we moved to the shelter, he became estranged from his kittenhood friends, probably because there’s so much living space and that’s

allowing him to finally return to his true solitary nature. But he is also cuddly and sweet, a big beauty in a small package, whose gleaming yellow eyes are shining like two little suns. And everything that’s worth knowing about cats is right there, in the bright

yellow gaze of an imperfect black kitty with a floppy ear.

Someone smarter than me said a long time ago that cats’ eyes are windows enabling us to see into another world and I couldn’t agree more. By all means, it’s a world far better than

the one we made for them.

The First Stroke of Winter

Winter has just struck with all of its fierce power. We’ve been literally snowed in for the last couple of days and a state of emergency has been declared for Vojvodina. When even the highways are buried in snow drifts, what can you expect of the local roads?

And yet my shelter, although not fully prepared for the winter weather, is holding on in a small snow-covered village…

We’re in the grip of a deep freeze, with continuing snowfall accompanied by frosty, biting and

stinging northerly winds. Luckily, this heavy snow can't contrive to pile up on my chain link fence, but the heaps of snow do build up on the rooftop. I guess it’s a good thing that I still don’t hear ominous cracking sounds from the roof as it is successfully bearing

the burden of extra weight, at least for now.

The yard resembles a winter wonderland. It’s not so magical, though, for those of us who are shoveling paths through the deep snow so that the others, the furry, four-legged ones, can

run and jump easily all over the yard. The youngsters are having a great time and loving the snow (yeah, it’s easy for them to love it), but most of the older kitties are definitely not impressed. Some of them took a brief walk through the snow on that first day,

decided they didn’t like it and are now resting in their warm rooms, while the others didn’t even desire to set foot outside. The only exception is Speki, whose fascination with snow is well known, but he won't be so delighted if the food delivery truck

doesn’t manage to push its way through.

Although we’re in mid-December, the snow caught everyone by surprise. When things get back to normal again, all of the doors of the kitties’ indoor enclosure and the gates will have to be

strengthened and fixed. This winter is obviously going to be brutal, with above normal heavy snowfall and frigid winds. We must do everything within our power to prepare for the cold months coming ahead the best we can. Please, help us with whatever you are able

to give! It’s a dire emergency here and there’s no more time to waste!