Two months after losing her beloved cat Maddie, Shannon was still grieving when a friend called her and asked if she could temporarily take in an abandoned kitten they had found.
Even though she didn’t feel ready for a new kitten, she agreed.
Although she wasn’t sure if she would keep the kitten, Shannon decided to take care of it for now and do her best to give it a decent chance at life.
Funnily enough, the similarities between this new kitten and her recently deceased cat were “striking”, both Maddie and the kitten were Siamese cats, and the kitten seemed to favor what used to be Maddie’s favorite spots in her home.
A new lease on life
The new kitten was taken to the vet for a general check-up and she was not in good condition.
She was severely underweight and had an upper respiratory infection, ringworm, and possibly feline leukemia.
As terrible as this news was, it was not going to cause Shannon to give up. Her recently deceased cat Maddie had only lived for four years, and she wanted a better life for this kitten. As she explained:
“Despite four years of trying I could not fix Maddie but perhaps I can do enough to give this little girl a fighting chance at life.”
It only took seventeen days of taking care of the new kitten for Shannon to choose to keep her, she decided to call the brave kitty; Katniss.
Full of life
Just three weeks after being rescued, the kitten had fully recovered and was in great shape. Thankfully she did not have feline leukemia after all, and her other conditions had cleared up.
She had nearly doubled in weight and was soon playing around carefree as every kitten should!
As the kitten grew, Shannon decided to name her Katniss.
Even if she didn’t know it at the time, Katniss turned out to be exactly what Shannon needed after losing her cat, Maddie.
Despite not knowing whether she would keep Katniss as a kitten at first, she soon fell in love, saying:
“Perhaps it was all the Maddie-like traits starting to emerge that made me wonder if she’d been sent to watch over me.”
Shannon and Katniss’ story is proof that love for a new cat does not replace the love for an old one, what really happens is that our hearts grow bigger.
