Our epic cat adventure has had plenty of ups and downs. Sorry for the block of text.

About 13 months ago I had a porch cat that would hang around when I was doing yard work. I accidentally spilled yard chemicals on her. I was able to get her to the emergency vet but not before she tried to groom herself and ingested some of the chemicals. The cat turned out to be fine. I kept her in the garage for a few days to keep an eye on her but once I let her out she bolted never to return, to the front yard anyway. I kept giving her food and water but I would never see her. I was wracked with guilt.

About a month later she ended up having kittens in my backyard under a black tarp. Unfortunately by the time I knew there were kittens outside one of my dogs had already gotten three of them. There were 2 left so we put them back in the same spot. The mom came back but only took one of them. At night when it was starting to get cold we brought her in and cut her umbilical card. We only had the intention of making whatever little time she had full of love and care.

Now the reason my porch cat never came in the house is that everyone (besides me) is allergic to cats. So we were not prepared to be inside cat people. It didn’t seem like she would make it despite multiple vet trips and feedings every 2-3 hours around the clock. My wife took her to work for the feedings, and we alternated night feedings until I ran out of gas, and she took over mama bear style. She knew the whole experience was mentally really rough for me, so through sheer determination she kept her going until we took her to the vet. He looked at the cat and said, “This kitten will live!” We finally gave her her name, Juju, to go with her dog sisters Penpen and Lulu.

We were thrilled, but concerned about the next steps. We loved her so much, there was no way to not keep her, but my family is very allergic. It’s been going well, I’m brushing and cleaning, and we’ve been lucky with one of the anti allergy cat foods.

We kept her away from the dogs and eventually slowly introduced them. They get along now, they’re always around each other except when the dogs go outside. Juju stays in because she has zero survival skills. I’m pretty sure she thinks she a dog.

She turned 1 yesterday and I just wanted to share our journey. Looking back, it’s been a lot of guilt, stress, and exhaustion, but it brought us here. Juju isn’t just a cat that was born in the backyard, she’s family. Seeing her happy and safe makes everything we went through worth it.