Love that Kitsel!!!
The cat you're talking about, Sherry, was my sweet Millie. She was four when she came to live here. Some children had locked her in a pool house when she was a tiny kitten and spent the next year and a half torturing her. One of the kids' mothers discovered what they had been doing and took the cat to the vet to be euthanized. He charged her for the euthanasia, but he worked on the kitty for the next 6 months, patching up her wounds and broken bones and bringing her back to health. She then lived with a foster family for two years, but they kept her in a cage in the garage the whole time because they had dogs.
When she came here, I tried to keep her in my office, but she bit me every time the phone rang, so I gave her a room of her own. I replaced the solid door with a glass door so she wouldn't feel isolated. She could watch the other cats, but she didn't have to engage with them. More than two years later, she came out of the room into the hall. This is a picture of Millie venturing out of her room for the first time.
She soon made friends with the other cats, especially Vanilla. I call this picture Milli-Vanilli.
She finally gained the courage to go outside when she was 8 or 9. She loved the garden. She's hunting gophers in this photo.
Sadly, she died when she was only 10, but she had been on borrowed time for so long that it's a miracle she lived to that age.
