Owner's Name
Venita Wood

Please include a short paragraph that tells voters something fun or interesting about the cat(s) and other animals in the photo. Which cat is diabetic? Is one or more a DCIN rescue? How long have the animals been a part of your family? Give some interesting information about the animal(s) in the photo that will encourage others to vote for your photo.

I am Willem, but call me Willie. Some DCIN friends may remember me as Norman. Almost four years ago, I was dumped outside a barn in North Carolina. The barn lady had my boy bits taken off because I should not have been making more kitties. And because I may have stayed a barn cat, the lady also had part of my ear taken off to show my boy bits were gone. The kitty doctor liked to keep big parts of kitty ears so I am a 1 1/2 eared cat.

A couple weeks later I didn't feel well and the barn lady took me back to the kitty doctor. I had the dire beasties so I couldn't be a barn cat. Also the barn lady traveled a lot and couldn't give me shots every day so she wrote the DCIN people who told her about better food. The DCIN people found me a foster home in Virginia and when I got there in a couple months, I was OTJ (off insulin/in remission). Then a nice lady offered me a forever home in New York, but her other cats didn't want me there and I had to go somewhere else.

The DCIN lady-in-charge had lost her King of Grumpy Ennis and that meant an opening for me. After I showed her what a nice guy I was, she said I could stay forever. I have been here three years.

I am lucky that I got dumped at that barn and had the dire beasties. I will forever get good food, kitty friends to play with every morning and nap with every afternoon, a day-long catio during warm weather, my own spot on the back of Mom's chair in the evening, and my own room at night. Maybe Mom should have called me Riley because that's the life I am living.