I wasn’t surprised when Mom called and told me that Smokey, the family’s barn cat, had delivered kittens again in March of 1997. My dad was of the old school that didn’t believe in spending “extra” money on barn cats to have them spayed. Smokey was now about 16 years old and I didn’t think we would have to worry about finding the kittens homes. For the past few years Smokey’s kittens were either stillborn or died within days. I guess she was just too old to still be having kittens

So I wasn’t surprised when Mom called a week later to tell me that all but one of the kittens had died. Mom moved Smokey and her remaining kitten into the garage and promised to keep me posted.

A couple of weeks later Mom called again. Something was wrong with the kitten and Dad wanted to “put him out of his misery.” She asked me to come down and take a look and let her know what I thought.

What I saw when I arrived at my parents’ home was very unusual. I found Smokey nursing a small, mouse-like 3-week old gray tabby kitten. Only one eye was open and his mouth was deformed. He had a crooked stub of a tail and a drunken walk. He was much more uncoordinated than most kittens his age.

Although I was concerned about his tiny size and premature development, this little kitten was such a character. Whenever he heard human voices he would leave his feline mom and seek us out. He followed us everywhere as fast as he could with his drunken walk. When anyone picked him up he would start purring immediately. The tiny kitten seemed so happy that I convinced my parents to give him another week.

I drove back to their home the next weekend fully expecting to find that the kitten had deteriorated, and sure enough, he had lost some weight. However, he still had that zest for life that I had seen the week before. I was still concerned about him so I convinced my parents to let me take him and put him in with the orphaned kittens I was fostering for the SPCA. Of course this was with the stipulation that I would not keep him. I already had 2 dogs and a cantankerous Persian who hated other male cats.

The first order of business once I got the kitten to my apartment was a vet visit. It did not go as I had planned. The kitten was underweight, but the kitten formula was causing him respiratory problems. The vet helped me to quickly progress him off of kitten formula and to dry food. The kitten had a cleft palate and nose. I was told that he should have died at birth or shortly after because kittens with this type of deformity usually aren’t able to nurse properly. The vet checked his closed eye and said it would never open. The entire left side of this kitten’s face had not developed. The vet also suspected brain damage due to his staggering walk. The prognosis was not good. I was told that the kitten would not live past his first birthday.

I went home from the veterinarian crying. What was I doing? Did this kitten have any chance at all? I put him in with the foster kittens who were also 4 weeks old and just watched. He was half their size and was not as well developed as they were. Maybe I should just let my vet put him to sleep. I went to cook dinner and think about what I needed to do.

It was then that I noticed that Abbie, my toy poodle, was not underfoot like she usually was at dinnertime. I went to see what trouble she was up to and was shocked by what I saw. The foster kittens were in my bathroom isolated from my 4-legged family by a tall baby gate. I had no problems with this arrangement in the almost three years that I fostered. However, this time Abbie was staring intently at the gate. With one giant leap she landed at the top of the gate and jumped over to where the kittens were. I had no fear of her harming the kittens, but she had never wanted anything to do with them. I silently watched as she went straight to the deformed kitten and gently picked him up by the scruff of the neck. She proceeded to jump back over the baby gate with the kitten in her mouth and took the kitten to my bed where she proceeded to snuggle with and groom him. Abbie looked up at me with a look that said, “If you don’t want to take care of him, I will. I won’t give up on him.” I guess you could say Abbie made up my mind for me.

That was the last time the little deformed kitten was put in with the foster kittens. Abbie wouldn’t allow it. Anytime I put him in the bathroom, Abbie would proceed to get him and take him to my bed. (Not a good thing since this little kitten wasn’t litter trained yet.) Abbie took over the care of that little kitten and even went so far as to protect him from my other cat and the foster kittens’ rough playing. Abbie and the little kitten were inseparable.

In the meantime my foster kittens were getting adopted and new foster kittens arrived. No one seemed to be interested in a one-eyed deformed kitten with breathing problems. Okay… so maybe I didn’t try as hard as I could to find him a home. I couldn’t upset Abbie by adopting out her baby. I know…Excuses, excuses.

The kitten had to go to the vet several times a month due to respiratory problems caused by the cleft palate and nose. At one time he was even going to the vet twice a day for breathing treatments. At night Abbie and I would hole ourselves up in the bathroom with the kitten and a vaporizer going just so that the kitten could breathe. Many nights I cried just hoping that this poor baby wouldn’t stop breathing. I would listen to the kitten struggling for breath wondering if I was doing the right thing. All I had to do was look at Abbie and the kitten and Abbie’s eyes said it all. “Don’t give up on our baby.” And there was still that mischievous sparkle in the kitten’s eye.

I still had not named the kitten. You know the saying, “If you don’t name it, it isn’t yours.” And I couldn’t find the perfect name for this kitten. I was also thinking who wants to name a kitten that might not survive. I had been through the pain of losing foster kittens to death and I was not looking forward to going through it again.

With the vet’s help and constant advice we finally got the kitten’s breathing problems under control. The kitten finally got to where he could go an entire month without a visit to the vet. Finally he was healthy enough for his “special day” at the vet. It was after his neutering that I finally came up with the perfect name, Lucky.

You may be wondering what kind of a life could a sickly deformed kitten have. Lucky topped 16 pounds at his heaviest and actually had to go on a diet. There was no brain damage as was first suspected. However Lucky still had that special swagger to his walk. My Persian never loved Lucky, but he never tried to beat up on him like he had any other male cats I had brought in. And this very special cat grew up to become an award winning therapy cat.

Lucky would go to work with me at Jefferson Elementary School in Sherman, Texas where I taught deaf children. He shared his duties with Abbie who was a certified therapy dog. When Lucky was at school he would greet everyone at the door with a loud “Meow!” If that didn’t work he would paw at their legs until they told him hello or pet him. Then he would sprawl on the table and bask in all the attention the children gave him. The children loved it when Lucky decided that they had worked long enough and he would lay right down in the middle of all their work. We called this taking a “Lucky break.”

My deaf students became so excited when Lucky purred because they didn’t have to hear it to know that they were making Lucky happy. They could feel it and see it. The students couldn’t believe that Lucky “shook” when he was very happy, which was most of the time as long as someone was giving him attention.

Lucky also worked with the regular education students. One year we had a writing contest in a first grade classroom. The children were to write a short story about the therapy pet of their choice and several students chose to write about Lucky. The recurring theme through all the stories was the same. But one low-achieving student, who hardly ever finished his work, turned in a book that won first prize. He was so proud, but not as proud as I was because he wrote, “I love Lucky because he loves me too.”

Lucky also volunteered at several area nursing homes and the Reba McEntire Center for Rehabilitation in Denison, Texas. He loved to lay on the beds and receive the loving from the clients. The clients and staff alike got a kick out of seeing a cat walking on a leash down the sterile halls of the center.

Clients at the rehabilitation center often realized that things weren’t that bad and could be worse. One client said, “He reminds me of the saying…’I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man that had no feet.’” On another visit a nurse came and got us out of a client’s room. Another client was upset because we had skipped her room, she was asleep at the time, and she had heard that we were visiting. She really wanted to see Lucky so by the time the nurse had gotten me from the other end of the center, this client was out of bed and into her wheelchair rolling down the hall to be sure that she got to see Lucky. She took one long look at him and said, “My goodness…He’s worse off than we are.”

But perhaps one of Lucky’s most important jobs was teaching people about accepting differences, either their own differences or those in other people. Lucky wrote his own autobiographical book that we used in many classrooms to teach children about differences and I could only hope that I got our message across. I didn’t realize how well Lucky and I were getting the message across until the mother of one of my own students relayed this story to me.

My student was a beautiful little girl who was having trouble understanding why she was deaf and different from all the other kids. She would go home after Lucky’s visits and describe him and his antics in detail to her father. This was wonderful for expanding her limited language skills and it was also one of her educational goals. One day after she described Lucky in detail she said, “…and he only has one eye. But that’s okay, Daddy. He’s different, just like me.”

When I think of the fact that Lucky used up at least four of his nine lives by the time he was a year old, I am amazed at how successful he became. In October of 2000 Lucky was the co-winner of Delta Society’s National Therapy Pet of the Year Award. Lucky and I flew to Boston to receive the award where Lucky was the only cat present. He has appeared in several newspaper and magazine articles (Animal Wellness, Cat Fancy, Cats, PetLife, etc…) and even appeared in a segment of “Amazing Animals” on the Animal Planet network and “Miracle Pets” on the PAX network. He has a segment in the book The Healing Power of Pets by Dr. Marty Becker and he has been on the front page of our local newspaper. He can also be seen in Workman Publishing’s 2003 Cat-a-Day Calendar. His story appeared in Allen and Linda Anderson’s book “Cat Angels” as the grand prize winning story. I can’t help but think that Lucky not only worked miracles, his entire life was a miracle.

Lucky retired from therapy work at the age of 6 and a half due to sudden onset of car-sickness. Unfortunately, Lucky’s health started declining in January of 2004 when he was diagnosed with asthma. In September he became very sick and the vets could not find out what was wrong. He was so sick that we were syringe feeding and he was going to the vet daily so they could feed him while I was at work. I would always bring him home with me in the evenings after work. He fought hard, but after two weeks he passed away at home from the unknown illness with complications from asthma at the ripe, old age of 7 and a half. Not bad for a sickly kitten that wasn’t supposed to live past his first birthday. There is a huge Lucky sized hole in my heart that will never be filled. ‘Till we meet at the Bridge, Lucky dear.