After Living In Filthy Hoarding Situation, Sophie Has To Adjust To Life Outside Of Tiny Cage

Animal hoarding is a very complex and serious issue.

Sometimes, a person may have the very best of intentions, but end up harming the very animals they’ve attempted to rescue.

We all want to help needy animals we see. But, we have to be realistic about what we can actually do to help.

Offering a home that will end up being substandard because of your overstretched capabilities is not the answer.

It puts a major strain on local rescue groups when a hoarding situation is uncovered and animals are removed from the site.

Sometimes the animals are so sick and malnourished that they require large amounts of money for their care.

Oftentimes the animals have not been socialized and have a hard time fitting back into a normal home.

When a black and white cat named Sophie was found during a raid on a hoarding situation, she was in a small, cramped cage that had been her entire world for 3 years.

It was all she knew and she probably never thought she’d escape her wretched living conditions.

But luckily, she was adopted fairly quickly and adapted beautifully to being loved and cared for instead of neglected and abandoned.

Furthermore, she had few of the quirks that many hoarding victims sometimes acquire.

The one quirk that she did have, the new family found interesting and endearing instead of difficult.

She refused to sleep anywhere except on top of the dresser in the room where her new “parents” slept.

After a while, her mom, Christiana Viscusi, decided to simply make her a comfortable place on the dresser to sleep instead of insisting that she sleep somewhere else.

She found a small doll bed that fit Sophie perfectly.

Viscusi had a great time outfitting the bed for Sophie, with lots of different bedding.

Sophie seemed to enjoy the attention and snuggled every night into her new bed in her favorite spot in the house!

Once she was tucked in for the night, except for an occasional emergency trip to the food bowl or the litter box in the middle of the night, she never moved.

She stayed in her little bed cuddling one of her toys until the alarm went off. 

During the day, Sophie developed other adorable habits.

She loved to be outdoors and when her mom asked if she wanted to go outside, she would come running and sit down to get her harness put on to go out.

She loved enjoying the fresh air while keeping an eye on their yard!Sophie’s start on life may have been rough, but she was one of the lucky ones that eventually got to enjoy life with a family that loved her.

Sadly, Sophie wound up getting a huge hairball lodged in her small intestine, which had to be surgically removed.

She then came down with aspiration pneumonia and despite the vets’ best efforts, wound up passing away at the young age of six.

The family grieved their loss but knew that Sophie would want them to share their life with another lucky cat. So…

In her memory, her parents decided to adopt another cat at the shelter.

This cat, named Louie, is three years old and was surrendered to the shelter after his owner became sick and could no longer care for him.

Best wishes to Louie and his family. May he be the great blessing to the family that Sophie was during her too-short lifetime.

Hopefully he will learn to enjoy her bed and carry on Sophie’s tradition of endearing cat naps!

Source: Animal Rescue Site