My cat Mischief is very dear to me, more dear than any animal I have had in my adult life. She's the cat in my profile picture. Someone found her in the dumpster outside while I was volunteering for a cat rescue inside a pet store. She was days, maybe a week old at most. Momma cat was nowhere around. Missy had a broken elbow, a grave case of worms, and maggots were eating at her neck. She used to have a scar in that area but it faded as she grew. The rescue vet could not do anything for her elbow since she was so small (she had a limp that slowly went away and now there’s a large mass of bone around the joint. It does not seem to phase her). Every two hours I fed her, reheated her pad, and stimulated her genitals and rear so she could go to the bathroom. She would not take a bottle so I had to feed her with a milliliter oral syringe. It was most likely that she would die since she was alone with no mom. But every morning she was there stretching her toe beans.

She climbed and rolled out of her box before she could walk. She was my first kitten as an adult. I did not want kittens. I liked older cats who were not as needy, small, and destructive. Missy chewed through the cables of two pairs of headphones and a drill. I have fostered 35-40 cats without a problem giving them up to their forever home. Other volunteers said it would happen eventually. I even named her after my mom (Mischief is her middle name) because I thought it was flattering to have a cat in the rescue with my mom’s unique name. The look she gave me when we went to our first adoption event with wide eyes of trust and inquisitiveness, I could not do it. She is my one and only foster failure.

She is 15 and had started losing weight rapidly. At her last vet visit, tests indicated that she is in renal failure. She has always had trouble with uric crystals. We gave her wet food and broth when they would act up, and only offered her purified water. She will nibble on Purina Cat Gentle and eat some hard treats but mostly won’t eat anything except wet food. If it is a smooth consistency, she will drink what liquid she can from it and leave the rest. I mix lickable treats and meat baby food in her food so she’ll eat more. Now she needs prescription Purina food, if she will eat it (I’m asking for a sample of the dry so I don’t waste money on something she won’t eat). Prescription pet food is astronomically expensive. Normally I would let nature take its course and make the right decision when there was little quality of life left because they have lived a long life. Just like Missy was my only foster failure, she is my only exception.

Missy is a curious and forgiving cat. Despite our dogs chasing her in the past, once they learned to stay calm around her, she wanted to sniff and come say hi. She loves to tiptoe around new places and peek her head out. She is passive and kind. She uses her paw to get someone’s attention without her claws. She used to play fetch as a juvenile cat. A large part of her life I had too many animals and feel like I did not give her the attention she deserved. Now that I am down to three pets, I want to give her the best of what she has left. And I’m hoping to increase the time I have with her although I don’t know how long it will be. My mistakes and current disposition related to her life is a complicated story of mental illness.

I lost all the pictures I had of her growing up except one that a friend was able to salvage for me. Someone stole, ransomed, and deleted my first Facebook which had all my pictures of her as a kitten and juvenile.

If you cannot contribute, sharing this page and getting the word out is also helpful. Come visit us in a live streams on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@sklauda1) or TikTok (@sklauda1) to help us become more visible and see Missy for yourself. Check out my other GoFundMe for our neighbor’s pregnant outside cat.