Tiffney: The Cat Who Lived in a Shoe Box

      The afternoon sun highlights the dark blue lettering on the old shoe box “Freeman Free Flex” it proclaims, and the letters quiver a little as it’s occupant gently lowers herself into her favorite resting spot.  

     Only a month before Tiffney, who had just come to us as a rescue Himalayan, had a terrible temper.  She hated everyone and everything.  She, once beautiful, had been unrecognizable, her shining silky coat a charred mess, her ears almost burned from her head.  Only her instincts had saved her life as she escaped from the fiery inferno that once was our home, and plunged into the cool waters of the lake in the darkness of the night.  Her long coat, although fused, had protected her body from the flames.  Found alone on the beach, in the chill early dawn, a gummy sticky mass, her gorgeous azure blue eyes now hidden beneath a sickening cataract glaze.

     Rushed to the vet, it would take a long week of intensive care before we knew whether she would make it, her eyes being the most worrisome problem.  She still had to be coaxed to eat, her throat raw from the searing smoke.  Finally she was well enough to be shorn of the coagulated mess that had been a shimmering glossy coat.  Feeling better, but quite the ugly duckling, Tiffany was ready to go home, although she had no longer had a home to go to.   Stealthily smuggled into the “no pets allowed” motel room, we had been offered after the fire, and taking up residence under the gas range, litter box hidden under the kitchen sink, she slowly improved to the point that she could walk on her painful paw pads.

     Once established in a real home, it was obvious that Tiffany was extremely embarrassed by her new appearance, scurrying away when finding herself in the presence of the other felines of the household, and the others, scared by her wild looks hissed and snarled in fright. She was no longer a defensive, clawing fiend, the fire seemed to have taken the inferno out of her. Declawed by her previous owner, and not being able to defend herself from the more permanent residents, she found the shoebox left carelessly on the kitchen table, and with much squirming and turning, she decided she had found her niche.  This was her box, and Lord help anyone who might even think about trying to take it away from her.   

     As her physical appearance improved, and her painful memories seemed to dim, she continued to live in the shoebox, making only short forays into warm laps of the family to steal a bit of breakfast.  Her antics as she extricates herself, the care with which she plants her rotund body into it are enjoyed by the family as they sit around the small kitchen table, and they are thankful that for now, Tiffany has found a place to call home.