Ziggy
The story begins like so many others with a message about a stray cat. This past July a Memphis couple messaged us when a dapper black/white cat approached their home and did his best to convince them to let him inside. But they were already at their pet limit and just couldn't adopt another, so they reached out to us, and since we had a spot available at MeowHouse, we were happy to welcome Ziggy to Purrfect Match!
Ziggy enjoying a cuddle from Allison
The story takes a sad turn when we took Ziggy to our vet for an exam, testing etc and found out that this sweet boy was positive for both leukemia and FIV. The reality is that most rescues would have opted to euthanize at this point since this news adds so many challenges and complications to the situation, but Purrfect Match makes a solemn promise to do our best for every cat we accept into our rescue and euthanizing this amazing cat could not be the right decision! I can assure you, spending a mere 5 minutes with Ziggy would convince anyone that depriving the world of his presence would be a travesty because this cat is pure love and joy incarnate! He literally jumps into your arms, not only eager for affection, but seemingly aware on some level that his presence has a soothing, restorative effect and wanting to share that too.
We were still processing the unhappy news of his test results when Ziggy started coming down with an upper respiratory infection. This isn't unusual when a cat is getting acclimated to a multi-cat environment, but with Ziggy's extremely compromised immune system, the URI got very serious very fast. He ended up being hospitalized at our vet clinic for almost a week and at first we didn't even know if he could pull through. But finally, he turned a corner and started eating again on his own and we were so relieved! He was finally stable enough to come back to MeowHouse and we got him set up in his own room with volunteers coming to spend time with him throughout the day since he is such a people kitty and we wanted to keep his spirits up.
Toward the tail end of his hospitalization, I got a message from Kelli, the director of Cat Tales Rescue in NH - I had contacted her when we first got Ziggy's test results asking if she knew of anyone who might be interested in adopted a leukemia+ cat. Benevolent forces were finally on Ziggy's side because Kelli did know of a great home for a leukemia+ cat! She had adopted out a leukemia cat named Avery to Jason (who lives in Baltimore, MD) several years ago as a friend for his cat who also had leukemia. His original cat had recently passed away and Avery was lonely, so he reached out to Kelli to see if she happened to have another leukemia+ cat. Kelli put Jason and I in touch and we chatted and facetimed so he could meet Ziggy and we were all easily convinced that Ziggy and Jason would be great for each other. We kept Ziggy another few weeks to make sure that he was completely healthy and over the URI and then we bought a plane ticket so that Whitney and Ziggy could fly to Baltimore to meet Jason. Whitney said that Ziggy was immediately comfortable with Jason, and Jason was immediately smitten! We've kept in touch with Jason since Ziggy moved in and everything is going so well! Jason has had Ziggy checked over by his vet as we requested (and of course Ziggy was a huge hit!), Ziggy sleeps with him at night and Jason loves him so much. This happy ending was miraculous on many levels and we are so grateful that we are able to go over and above to help kitties like Ziggy thanks to our amazing supporters!
Ziggy meets Jason at the BWI Airport!
Two contented dudes