Office cat FINALLY gets her home!

Hi IMHS Fans – nice to meet you all! I’m Zelda, and I’m so excited to tell you all about my life since coming to IMHS. First off, don’t worry, it’s not one of those super sad weepy stories – just a happy story from a very happy cat.

My original name was Thumbs, and they called me that because I’m POLYDACTYL. It’s OK if you don’t know what that means, I never heard that word before either. It just means I have extra toes – makes it more fun when I climb all over my people, but I never noticed I was different from other cats. When I came to IMHS in November of 2016, I had been an ‘office cat’ at a nearby veterinary office – but then they decided not to have any more cats in the office, so I came to IMHS. As an office cat, there is nothing I liked better than meeting strangers (both 2 legged and 4 legged), so once I moved here, they let me keep my role as office cat, and I got to live in the IMHS office with Aly Stein, the shelter manager of IMHS. Her office is a pretty busy place – volunteers coming in and out, and really cool community members stop by all the time. It was great, EVERYONE wanted to pet me, and let me sleep in their lap. Definitely fun for me – but nights were pretty lonely – so I really did want to find a home where I could sleep in a bed with PEOPLE and maybe hang out with some other pets.

About a 6 months ago, I met this really cool lady named Amy who’s a volunteer here. I knew she was pretty cool because she always had a lot of fur on her! Whenever there were meetings in the office, I would hang with her and loved the royal cuddle treatments she gave me. And then, Amy brought her kids in, and I got to hang with them too – they are super nice and know how to pet me in that perfect way that makes me purr like an outboard motor. Amy already had a cat at home who was a little lonely as he lost his buddy a while back. But her cat wasn’t always nice to others so Amy just didn’t know what to do with me. Luckily, the IMHS staff are experts on helping people and pets in just this situation – so armed with advice, Amy decided she would take me home on a tryout. Well, at first, she made sure that her cat Fafner and I were kept at a distance and we had to stay in different rooms. Little by little we got used to each other, and with the help of some cans of tuna and a loving family, we started a friendship. And now, we are total buds. And it’s not just Fafner I made friends with. There are a couple of dogs who I’m also friends with, but my very favorite are the KIDS! I get to sleep with Colin almost every night, and Claire and Emma also love to spend time with me. Now I know that I have the best life any cat could imagine!