What magic do cats have, to touch the lives of humans? With the first cold breath of winter, some abandoned cats and kittens are lucky enough to find a human who takes them in. Other cats teach important holiday lessons to their human families. Enjoy these stories of holiday cat magic!

Kasha's Wings
By by Pat Cizewski
Patciz@worldnet.att.net

She was a scrawny, sickly little creature when I found her in 1983. Born to a Siamese mother who was sentenced to a life outdoors, she had no chance of survival. Flea and mite infested with an upper respiratory infection so severe pus oozed from her eyes. The vet didn't hold out much hope that this little kitten, no more than 12 weeks old, would live very long. Undeterred, I named her Kasha...the English spelling for the Polish word meaning buckwheat and reflecting the color of her fur.

I didn't know it then, and wouldn't for many years, but that upper respiratory infection had collapsed one lung. Kasha grew and filled out playing heartily with her adopted feline brother, Ashley (also a rescue). Kasha and Ashley accompanied me through many changes of residence and several relationships until we finally settled just outside of Boston. Not long after, we discovered that Kasha had developed hyperthyroidism...then hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and chronic renal failure. She developed a toxicity to the only medication able to control her thyroid and from there she went into congestive heart failure. It was August 1999. Kasha was 16 years old.

I remember the day well. Kasha hadn't moved in a couple of days. Her feet were swelling and she was losing the fur on her feet and nose where a perspiration-like fluid oozed from her skin. It was time. I lifted her into her carrier and, together with my life partner, Michelle, took her to the vet to ease her transition into the spirit world. As a member of an internet holistic cat care group, Holisticat, I had put the word out that Kasha was going to be "put to sleep" that afternoon. I told my fellow members the exact time of her appointment and asked for their prayers...not for a cure, but for peace for us all.

The vet prepared the "pink solution" as I lifted Kasha's limp body onto the examining table. The vet began her final examination of Kasha, but Kasha had other plans. For the first time in days, she stood up and then, to the amazement of us all, she jumped off the exam table and back into her carrier. Hmmmm....we all just looked at each other. Obviously, Kasha hadn't given up the fight so we thanked the vet and brought Kasha back home. I went online to inform the list of this turn of events and discovered that dozens of Holisticatters had prayed for Kasha at exactly the time of her vet appointment. Prayers came in from nearly every continent and apparently, Kasha heard them all. It was one of many "Kasha miracles."

There was no magic cure for Kasha. We sustained her with homeopathic and herbal treatments until the vets at Tufts University Animal Hospital saw her and immediately recognized her fiesty spirit. She lived for a week at the hospital in a baby incubator in the emergency room as the doctors stabilized her. They told me how Kasha was so alert and sat up in her incubator to watch everything that happened in the emergency room. During that week when Kasha "supervised" the emergency room, not a single animal died. Not even the dog who had nearly been ripped to shreds by another dog, nor the dog that had been hit by a car...not a single casualty the entire week.

We brought Kasha home, then, and made the hour-long trip back and forth to Tufts for check ups and plans to heal Kasha. The vets were going to try an experimental surgery where they would treat Kasha like a trauma victim going in quickly, removing the thyroid quickly, and getting back out in record time. It was the only way, the only hope, that a 16-year-old could survive such a procedure. In the mean time, we focused on keeping her stabilized.

It was December 11, 1999, when we brought Kasha in for her check up and blood sample in preparation for her surgery which was to be scheduled within the next few weeks. That night when we brought Kasha home, she was salivating from the mouth...a kind of sticky fluid...and her breathing was rapid and shallow. We rushed her back to Tufts. It would be our last trip. The following morning we received a call that Kasha was dying of a septic infection and probably would not live even another hour.

An hour...the exact amount of time it took us to drive from our home south of Boston to Tufts.

Rushing to the hospital, I noticed a hawk flying above and to the right of our car. Hawk after hawk led the way to the hospital and so it was no surprise that Kasha was still alive to say her good-bye. The vet brought her to me in the exam room and I asked if we couldn't just let her die naturally. The vet said it wouldn't be an easy death and she left to get the "pink solution"...Kasha didn't live long enough to be injected with it. Before the vet could get back, Kasha suffered violent and rapid seizures in my arms and died. The vet came back and knelt beside me as I cradled my dear Kasha in my arms, now lifeless but at peace. We cried together for we both recognized that an amazing, miraculous animal had just passed from our presence.

But the miracle didn't end there....not for this kitty. I called my parents to let them know Kasha had passed. My father reminded me that two years ago to the very day, my grandmother had passed away at the age of 101 years. He then said, "It's interesting considering you named your cat after your grandmother."

Huh? My grandmother's name was Katherine...whatever was my father talking about? What I never knew until that day was that my grandfather's nickname for my grandmother was Kasha. And so the last miracle was revealed...on the anniversary of her transition into a life of spirit, Kasha had come to help Kasha.

Two weeks later we celebrated Christmas. We hung our stockings, one for each human and one for each kitty. Fifteen stockings hung on the wall, but one very special stocking sported angel's wings, for Kasha surely is continuing to make miracles from heaven.

Lucy
By Del Daniels
DandCDaniels@aol.com

We moved to Southern Illinois in April, 1999, and I was thrilled to see a black and white stray coming around our new home. Where we lived in northern Illinois I was hassled by the community for feeding homeless cats. My five cats were indoor only and I wanted to add to the family.

Lucy was frightened and hid under the camper parked beside the house but would come out to eat at night. Gradually she allowed me to come closer and then brought a white kitten. A week later she brought another white kitten to visit who was very frightened of humans and ran fast as lightening.

Lucy weighed only 4-1/2 lbs when I took her to the vet for spay. She convalesced quietly in the spare bedroom for the week. The night before her stitches were to be out I talked with her about whether to let her back outdoors or integrate her into the cat family. She made her decision at 2am and began to bounce on the walls wanting outside.

That was in June. She stayed around our yard most of the time and I frequently held the door open trying to coax her indoors. No way. As November cooled down she would sometimes come barely inside the back door by the family room and eat but remain vigilant and I had to leave the door open. December was colder and she did take a couple of quick tours around the family room but right back outside.

And then came the day of Christmas eve and it was 10 degrees outside. That evening I held the door open and asked her if she would like to spend the night. Much to my surprise, she did. First thing the next morning Lucy was at the back door, "Thank you very much, Lady, but I'll be leaving now." I opened the door and it was still 10 degrees. She stood in the doorway and swished her tail a few times, turned around and marched hautily back inside. "Well, maybe not today."

Lucy has never asked to go back outside again. Initially the TV noise or radio was scary to her. She felt safe in the family room and going into the rest of the house took months. She is a happy girl and a bit pudgy.

Of course her two kittens, Sam and Lightning Bug became a part of our cat family early on.

Luna
By Anna C. Abney
AradaceDragon@aol.com

Luna was found sitting huddled up on a piece of construction equipment near a very kind woman's house. When she approached this tiny ragged looking black kitty in order to pet her, she noticed that she had a pink rhinestone collar wrapped tightly about her neck and right foreleg. She scooped up the little creature, who was incredibly friendly, and rushed her to the vet, who just happened to be the one for whom I worked at the time. Upon further examination, the collar was found to be deeply imbedded in the flesh of her underarm and chest, and was cutting off her air supply at the throat. She was rushed into emergency surgery to remove the collar, at which time she nearly hemorrhaged to death as the collar was no longer blocking the blood from the deep wounds it had caused. The flow was stemmed and she awoke free of the horrendous pain of the collar. When I first saw her, she was in the recovery area, bleary from surgery but awake enough to purr when I spoke to her. She was a year old, but only weighed 3 pounds. She was skin and bones, smelled terrible, had a thin, greasy, flaky coat, and no hair at all on her ears or the area that had been shaven for her surgery. But she had a spirit, and it was as big as any large wildcat. It shone out of her eyes, which were as large as the moon, especially in her tiny, woebegone little face. She was entered into our adoption program as number 57.

As she recovered, she began systematically charming the entire hospital staff. She talked to every one in her tiny, sweet voice, and reached out with little paws to anyone who walked by her cage, begging to be fondled and hugged. Like everyone else, I fell in love with her. But my fiance' and I lived in a "no pets" apartment. So I just loved her as much as I could and hoped someone on the staff would take her home so I could still see her on occasion. I brought my fiance' to meet this little kitty who had captured my heart. She enspelled him even more easily and for days he and I talked of nothing else.

Finally, when I was walking past the cat room on my way to the kennels, she was out playing with two of the receptionists. She saw me and ran to me, stretched her little forepaws as far as she could reach up my leg, and mewed quite clearly "Take me home!" That was it. We would be moving soon, and I could easily hide this little mite from the apartment management until then. Norbert (my fiance') was all for it, so I put my name in her chart and took her home. We named her Luna, for her big moony eyes and her huge goddesslike personality.

She blossomed with us. Her coat grew into a long, silky blackness that is long enough to mask the scarring and minor disfigurement of the imbedded collar (she is missing the flap of skin from the elbow to the body on her right foreleg). She never grew large, but filled out to about 6 pounds of fluid muscle and grace. She is clearly part Persian, from her short coupled build to her small ears and nose and large, round eyes. She is more delicate than a Persian, light frame, silky rather than thick coat, and small, but not snubbed nose. Her personality is an incongruous mixture of queenly yet sweet. She clearly rules the house, without challenge nor peer, but is also a cuddler and infinitely handleable. She enjoys belly rubs and grooming, and can even be held upside down over one's head with nothing more than the waving of "happy paws", a quintessential "floppicat". She rules over the boy cats with a velveted iron paw, despite the fact that both outweigh her by at least 4 pounds and growing. Even my mother's cat, a 20 pound black shorthair, bows to her every whim without complaint. My 56 pound dog is her personal heated pillow and won't move until Luna awakens and moves herself. All humans adore her, but human males are especially weak to her magic. I haven't met one yet that can resist her charms. She's 4 now, fully matured, and a matriarch, a queen, and a resident goddess. To look at her now, one would never imagine that she was once a throwaway, an emaciated, grievously injured little street waif. It just doesn't fit with the gorgeous, pampered, delightful, healthy creature she has become. She's found her place and she is one in a million. We will never forget our Luna cat, our first pet, our first baby. I thank my lucky stars she chose us.

Golda
By Pat Erickson
meridian@chugach.net

I don't know why my husband went in the old garage late that afternoon. We were preparing a little rental house of my mother's for my brother and family, moving my head-injured nephew closer to family and therapy. That garage hadn't housed a car in years; little was stored there and we rarely opened the creaky old doors. Fortunately he went in for something or other and came rushing back to the house to tell me he'd found a cat and kitten in the garage!

Of course I was there in a flash. I found a thin orange cat, with just a stub of a tail, curled on a dirty old rag on the floor with a tiny kitten creeping nearby. We heard mewing behind a sheet of plywood propped against the wall and found another kitten. A search under, over and around everything else produced only those two wee kittens. Mother cat accepted our petting and handling of the kittens without concern.

Thinking she might live nearby but had decided to move her kittens for some reason of her own, I wanted to canvass the neighborhood. First I ensconced mother and kittens in a warm nest of cardboard box and clean blanket, with food and water bowls, then trekked around to learn what I could. A neighbor pointed out a house where he'd seen a short-tailed orange cat but no one answered my knock. We lived out of town and had to get home to our own two cats. I checked the little family in the garage, made sure provisions were adequate, and assured them I'd return in the morning.

The temperature dropped below freezing that night and the air smelled of snow. I knew the nest I'd made was snug enough but the night seemed to stretch on forever. In the morning, back in town, cat and kittens were right where we'd left them in the box. She hadn't retrieved any more kittens so I hoped those were the only two in that litter. Certainly she'd relished the food! I set off to pin down her story and learned that she had been living in a rental in the next block. Her people moved away and left her behind. The new tenants shut her out because the rental rules disallowed pets. Pregnant and homeless, with winter coming on, she'd done the best she could for herself and her little family.

Picking up the whole kit and kaboodle, I placed them on the front seat of the car and buckled the seatbelt around the box. Golda, named on the spot, purred all the way home.

Our house had a finished daylight basement and two upper floors. We gave Golda and kittens the basement and kept the door shut to upstairs so our two neutered male cats couldn't tease or harass as they might think to do. At first we confined the new family to the bathroom. The stall shower worked wonderfully for the litter box, with the box protecting the drain, and bed and bowls fit under the counter.

Golda took tender care of her kittens. Their eyes opened, they grew quickly, they used the litter box, they ate from bowls. As they began to get feisty and frisky, we expanded their world to the whole basement. A friend of a friend heard their story, came to ask for them and when the little male and female were old enough, they went off to their new home.

During her sojourn in the basement, Golda found my over-wintering fuchsias and nibbled off the pale winter growth. She then vomited up an astonishing pile of roundworms. Worming and vaccinations were in order when the visiting vet came to town. He checked Golda's tail over and concluded it was genetic, not due to accident. After her kittens were adopted, I made another appointment for spaying for Golda.

Now it was time for Golda's debut. Of course our cats knew all about her from smells and sounds, and she knew about them, but living together might take some adjustment. SEM, our younger male, took all in stride but Pitka liked to stalk and tease and Golda learned to avoid him or stand her ground. Soon enough, the three were a congenial group.

Once released from the basement, Golda revealed that she didn't like stairs or brooms - we attributed these phobias to some mistreatment in her past. Since she was part Manx and had the hind legs to match, she skipped as many stairs as possible when ascending or descending. Evidently she thought I should share her stair phobia. When I went upstairs to our bathroom, she accompanied me and meowed insistently until I went back downstairs.

If Golda had her phobias, she also had her delights. A neighborhood donkey got loose one day and wandered into our yard to nibble flowers. Golda was enchanted! She pranced and danced around and around the donkey, flirting with abandon. A few years later we moved to another city and Golda discovered moose, every bit as good as donkeys if not better. She loved moose! She watched them in the yard. She sniffed noses with them through the window. She cavorted around them when she could. The moose seemed to find her as interesting as she found them.

Our children were grown when Golda came to live with us. Then they began to have children of their own and we often had babies and toddlers visiting for the day. Golda found the play of children very intriguing. She liked them and she liked their toys and games but as an adult cat, not as a compeer. When she had enough of children, she retreated to a chair under the dining table and hooked any little fingers that came wriggling in. Every grandchild or visiting child got hooked by Golda once, and usually once only. Their indignant howls were met with our admonishments to respect Golda's privacy as we anointed scratches with aloe vera gel. I saw Golda as a competent nanny with strong principles who didn't do diapers.

We lost our aging Pitka while still living in Golda's home town. Golda and SEM formed a friendship and took naps curled close to each other. They enjoyed similar temperaments and explored new household additions or opened drawers in tandem. We lost Golda very suddenly one night during the Gulf War. She simply dropped in her tracks without signs of ill health and without warning. I think of Golda when a moose visits the yard. When the air chills in anticipation of winter, I remember the brave little mother crouched on that old dirty rag. Then I think of her sturdy body nestled on my lap. Surely a light in our lives would have remained unlit without Golda.