Vegan MoFo : It’s Caturday!

So I know it’s called VeganMoFo (aka Vegan Month of Food), but I’d like to talk about my very important furbaby if you’ll indulge me. (and this is an opportunity to post a million cat pictures.)

We adopted Emmie earlier this year, from Toronto Cat Rescue. TCR is a no-kill, not for profit, registered charity, that is entirely run by volunteers. They also support Trap Neuter Release programs and tend to feral colonies in the city. I think most notably, I first encountered these folks at the 2010 Vegetarian Food Festival, and then researched more and followed them on twitter, and hoped that someday I would be able to help them, or adopt from them.

Well, that wonderful day came when my partner and I first decided… “let’s adopt a cat.” And then began our search for a suitable new fur friend. We began with the intention of adopting an adult cat. With my past involvement with Street Cat Rescue I know how hard it can be to adopt them out, and I liked the idea of finding a cat with a somewhat established personality, and one that needed less training. As you can probably tell from the picture… Emmie was not at all an adult cat when we adopted her.

Even as I write this, she’s not an adult cat yet. But after meeting over a hundred cats at the Toronto Humane Society, reading the profiles and looking at pictures of even more cats online from different rescue groups in the city, something just clicked about Emmie. We just fell in love with her sweet face, and her heartbreaking little story.

I sent off an email to TCR to find out more information about her and the adoption process, and within a day or two we had done a short phone interview and the next day we were driving 100km to meet her and see if she’d like us (and vice versa.)

She was fostered by an amazing family, home to fosters, former rescues that had found their forever home, and big loud dogs. She was shy at first, and hid in the corner of a stairwell, but soon she warmed up to us. Within the span of an hour, we were playing with her, and she was sprawled out on us, snuggling up and purring. So we put her in the cat carrier and took her to her forever home. And this snuggleball of love fits right in.

Emmie is a little ginger demon, that likes to sleep around my head at night and lick my eyelids when she thinks it’s an appropriate time for me to wake up, which thankfully is at earliest only 6-7am. She enjoys sitting on window sills and following me around the house. If I go upstairs, she goes up stairs, if I go to the kitchen, so will she. She’s a social kitten that hasn’t met a lap she didn’t like. I’m so glad she’s part of our little family.

Please consider giving a shelter or rescue cat a chance by adopting or fostering a rescue. If you want to know more about Toronto Cat Rescue here is some contact information:

Website: http://torontocatrescue.ca/
Twitter : @TorontoCatRescu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TorontoCatRescue

Also consider checking out the Teal Cat Project, if you haven’t already. It was started by Superstar Vegan Cookbookess Isa Chandra Moskowitz. The project helps support different cat rescues with the sale of re-purposed ceramic cat figurines.

Anyway, this is my first Caturday post, and I’m hoping to get around to writing a few more this month. Until next time, meow for now.