“Miss Mew” was a brown stray who began visiting our backyard a few years ago. One of our other cats, Dodger, first brought Miss Mew to our attention by talking to his buddy loudly through our sliding door. Then he would come running to us, nagging his ‘parents’ about his scrawny friend outside who was in desperate need of some TLC!

She was obviously feral: tiny, ribs showing, mangy and completely terrified of us. We began putting food out for her, mixing in antibiotics, vitamins, de-wormer and some pain medication.

She began to fall in love with my husband and slowly began to trust him. Whenever he would go out to garden, she would shadow him, leaping towards him and then leaping back when he would look her way! She developed the cutest little sound for him too, a kind of “purrrt-hiss” that was her special way of letting him know that it was time to PAY ATTENTION TO HER! But don’t touch.

After a couple of months, she would permit us to sit on our deck while she was laying on it. Our only concern was that she wouldn’t let us get close enough to catch her so that we could take her to the vet, have her fixed and add her to the indoor family.

But it was only Trevor who was allowed to touch: never me.

Then one day, suddenly, she wasn’t there. Trevor went out and called for her before work, at dinner and finally before bed. And then again, the next day. And the next. We became seriously worried, because we face an extremely busy street, and she could easily have been hit. Trevor spent a week going out and calling her, searching for her until we gave up hope. We were both feeling terribly guilty because we hadn’t been able to bring her in to safety.

Finally, one morning before work, Trevor went out on the deck as usual AND HEARD HER CALLING TO HIM! He frantically searched the whole backyard while she weakly called to him the whole time. She had somehow scratched a small indentation in the earth under the hedge and was waiting for her papa to find her. When he did, he couldn’t believe she was still alive and that she had somehow found her way back to us, since she had obviously been hit by some sort of vehicle.

She was covered in blood, one leg certainly shattered and internal injuries. Trevor came running in telling me what had happened. He grabbed one of our carriers, took the top off, lined it with the t-shirt he had on to try to keep her calm with his scent, and gently lifted her into the bottom of the carrier.

Miss Mew allowed him to pick her up, despite the dreadful pain she must have been in, and she didn’t hiss, spit, bite nor scratch – not even once! She was just so happy to see him she began to purr and stayed purring for the interminable ride to the vet. Once she was in the car and they were moving, he called ahead to prepare them for the emergency speeding their way.

Because the leg was so shattered, it wasn’t an easy amputation, so our vet decided to call in a specialist – who couldn’t be here from Guelph for three whole days! By now we had discovered that SHE was a HE: he was heavily sedated, and three days later when the leg was amputated, he was neutered at the same time.

A week later, we brought him home and made him a little bed on our king-sized one, with his food and water on the windowsill, and his own, small litter pan in the corner of the room. Once he knew where it was, that was it: like all cats he knew instinctively what the pan was for, even though he’d never seen one before.

He spent the next few weeks after that on the bed with us, where he ate, drank and slept. We put a stool towards the bottom of the bed for him to use and again, he completely surprised us by starting to use it right away.

He ate and drank more each day, but mostly he slept. We mixed his medicines into his food, so there was never any struggle to medicate him properly.

The first few weeks, our hearts broke every time we looked at him, but he never once seemed to notice that something was “different.” In no time at all, the shaved hair was growing back in, and this motley kitten was turning into a beautiful, black cat! We named him Asparagus, Gus for short, after a cat in the musical Cats.

In a short period of time, Gus was hobbling all over the house and he raced up and down the hallway, sometimes alone, sometimes playing tag with Dodger and our others.

We have a “cat tree” that he just flew up and then stretched out, on the top shelf to view the outside world – as long as he was safe inside.

Today, Gus is a huge boy with the most gorgeous coat of black fur that you have ever seen! His eyes are large and golden. His tail is almost the width of the leg he lost. In short, he is one of the most beautiful cats I have ever seen. And the missing leg? He has no idea! He even catches the occasional mouse that sneaks in.

And so, you have the history of our remarkable Asparagus.

We love and admire him: don’t you wish you had that kind of ability to just “get on” with life after such a terrible start? My husband often says that “Gus has come a million miles,” and he has. Luckily, for our sakes, somewhere along his incredible journey, he took the time to teach us a couple of things, too.