Cola - Why Cola?

Meet Cola. Fifteen pounds of undecided. She either loves you, hates you or is undecided. Shes a cat and a typical tortoiseshell at that. The vet told me once that all torties are moody like that.

She's 12 years old now and just as loveable and stubborn as always.

Here's her story.

Fate and Frustration

It all started with a visit to the animal shelter here in Edmonton. My wife and I had just bought our home here and I agreed we'd look at getting a cat once we were settled in.

Our Edmonton animal shelter at the time was a old, over-crowded, concrete block cell of a building. It smelled old because it wasn't designed for long-term use. It was hard to keep clean with limited funding and volunteers were had to come by. It was just a nasty place mainly because it was over-crowded.

We found our future house cat in a small wire cell. She was a seven week old rescue. She was too small to leave her mother but she had no choice as her mother died in a car accident. She was fostered out but was the only one that didn't get along with the other cats so she was hand reared until she was deemed able to be adopted.

I don't know what it was about her but we melted when we saw her, so small and alone. My wife liked her cry, so quiet and reserved. I liked her wide green eyes and her attention.

We made our choice. We wanted her for our own. Checking out at the adoption desk we were disappointed that we could reserve her adoption and pick her up on the weekend. I didn't want to take her home only to leave her alone while we went to work. I was off work for a week starting the weekend so we planned on taking her then. It would give us a week of supervised introductions. We just had to wait until the weekend to see if she was still there.

Our Princess Has a Home

Imagine our frustration when we showed up to the shelter early Saturday morning to find a RESERVED sign on our cats door. We were so happy to she she was still there but so frustrated when we were told we could reserve a cat, to find a reserved sign on her door.

My wife about had a fit. She went rushing to the desk complaining about it and to our joy they quickly took the reserved cat off the cage and we started adoption paper work right away. That is the problem with relying on volunteers, some make decisions they don't have the authority to make. That was the excuse we were given.

Needless to say we were over joyed at getting to bring our new member of the house home. She fit in the palm of my hand she was that small. I put her down on the counter top as I signed the papers and she tottered over to a cold Cocoa Cola can sitting there beside my wife's hand. I remembered the small kitten licking the condensation off the cold can. I wish I had a camera at that point. At that point she got her name. From licking the condensation of a cola can and the color of her fur. With her white belly fur and tortoiseshell coloring on to she looks like a spilled cola when she lies down.

At six months old our little kitten was growing and we took our first road trip. Stuffed into a little Neon sedan we traveled 14 hours to visit my parent. Cola is an indoor cat so seeing the world whiz by was a lot of excitement for her. She lounged on the back seat sun deck in perfect comfort.

She still only made tiny sounds which was fine by me. She didn't cry out loud for food or scream at the outside cats when they entered her yard. I was happy with the quiet cat.

Mom and Dad lived at the time, in a turn of the century farm house that was remodeled from a single story to a two story structure so it had stairs. Cola loved running up the flight of stairs and looking down at us from the top railing. She settled in quite well for the week we were there.

The excitement came when we were getting ready to go home. As we were driving out the driveway Cola was looking out the back window watching the house get smaller. At that point she let out a ROAR!!! I almost drove off the road I thought she slipped off the seat and got caught on something. It was the first time she made any amount of sound.

Now, ten years later she has matured in all ways and her cougar roar is enough to keep the dogs at bay.... but that is another story.