Toonces is rescued!!!

(moving from Montana back to Minnesota)

The short version of this story: Yesterday, I woke up and started crying. Hard. So sad to say goodbye to a cat that has moved with us to Montana, Nebraska, Alexandria and back to Minneapolis. He's been a faithful family mascot and we love him so much. So I cried. The ugly cry. The cry that has you staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror as you cry because you feel that sorry for yourself.

The morning moved along slowly. I filled out all of the paper work telling Toonces' next owners the important stuff like, "he loves water dripped on his back" and "he loves tiny wax paper balls to bat around on the hardwood floors." I ugly cried some more.

It was time to take him to the Humane Society, so we got his crate out. I loaded the diaper bag in the car and the paperwork. I was going in to get Ivar and told Rory we should call our next door neighbor to see if she wanted to say goodbye. I dialed, but then started crying too hard and handed the phone to Rory.

Our neighbor picked up and she and Rory discussed a new plan. You see, there are really only two other people in the whole wide world who love Toonces like we do. Alison our neighbor here in Minneapolis and Joan, our neighbor in Nebraska. (Both read this blog! Hi Ladies!) The rest of the world doesn't really care for our fat, shedding, vocal cat. But these two ladies do.

It's okay that others don't love Toonces. We wouldn't expect them to. We don't love other people's pets with the same love that we love Toonces, so it's okay.

But Alison loves Toonces. She really does and we can feel it. Sadly, her cat is ill and quite old for a cat, and she discussed with Rory that when her cat passes on, she would for real love to take Toonces. For real.

And that changed everything. Because our deadline was arbitrary. Obviously if we had been putting up with Toonces for 9 months, we can handle him a bit longer. We don't know if we'll have Toonces for another year or just another month. But just knowing that there is a loving lady who is ready to love and care for him made this whole story turn into a happy ending.

Not only that, we spent the day yesterday cleaning out a storage room in the basement and put all of Toonces things in there: food, litterbox, bed, pillows... There is a window and a high ledge and a shelf to sit on. And last night we put him in his new room and we could not hear a thing upstairs! Not a thing! He was meowing, but we couldn't hear him.

And the happiest ending to this story? Guess who slept through the night last night...11 hours?

Ivar Nicholas Groves.