We all know about the 12 Days of Christmas—the famous holiday carol about a lucky recipient receiving a series of gifts from their loved one. Although gifts can be a nice gesture, most can agree that the true joy of Christmas is being able to spend time at home surrounded by friends and family. Pets are entitled to the same comforts during the holidays, but unfortunately for the thousands of abandoned pets across the country, this isn’t always the case.
There are those pets who are lucky enough to receive the gift of love during the holidays—including those who may have not been ever able to experience this luxury before. In light of the season of giving, we’re offering 12 heartwarming pet adoption stories. These once-abandoned pets finally found their forever homes and are able to spend this Christmas surrounded by the best gift of all—love.
Gracie Ellen Tripod’s cat adoption pet story began when she was found in a parking lot, hiding underneath a car. It wasn’t until her future mom, Kelly, managed to coax her into coming out that she saw the pretty serious leg injury. “To buy me some time while I tried to find someone who would take this stray, I dropped her off at my vet’s office—who told me that the 6-month old was pregnant,” says Kelly. “Between pregnancy and a deformed leg, the local Humane Society made it clear that she probably wouldn’t last the day at their kill facility—she had too many strikes against her.”
Horrified by the shelter’s response, Kelly took the kitty home as a pet rescue. “It was when I changed her name from the temporary moniker Gimpy to the more respectful Gracie that I knew I was keeping her,” says Kelly.
Within a couple of months, Kelly had the injured leg amputated and had Gracie fixed. “She walked much better without the hindrance of the unusable leg, and she runs as though she still has all four,” Kelly says. “I don’t know what Gracie’s past life was like, but when she realized that she would be staying in my home, she promptly found the best places for napping, and rotated among them for over a year.”
In fact, Gracie spent so much time sleeping at first, that Kelly worried. “Then I decided that in her previous circumstance, sleep might have been a luxury she had not been able to enjoy much,” says Kelly. “She’s my friendliest cat, and her favorite thing to do is to jump up on the bed at night and curl up on my husband’s chest; every night, he grumbles about it, and every night, I remind him that he’s free to move Gracie to the foot of the bed—but he never does!”
See the next adoption story: Comedian and Pup’s Inseparable Bond
Diana Bocco is a full-time writer and adventurer who has written for National Geographic, DiscoveryChannel.com, Yahoo! and Marie Claire. Diana has lived in five countries and taken her rescued dogs along to each one of them.
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