KENTUCKY – The elegant black cat glided right across the carpeted living room floor, a very far cry from her previous home in war-torn Afghanistan.
She seems quite happy and well-adjusted in her new home with Barbara Padgett, despite the horrors she experienced in her short life.
Padgett’s grandson, whose name is Tyler Daniels, is a contract worker in Afghanistan. The 32-year-old is a dog lover, however, when the cat, now known as Bewler, began hanging around the office he shares with five others, he and his office mates took to her immediately.
“She was one of many stray cats we feed?” he said, noting how quickly they realized she had an injury.
“Three or 4 inches of her tail had been burned off,”?he said. “There was just bone hanging there at a 90-degree angle,” he said. The skin and fur around her tail were terribly charred.
“People are pretty cruel to animals there.”
Still, the cat seemed almost completely unaffected, until infection set in and the men knew they needed to get her to a veterinarian.
She got all her shots and part of her tail was amputated, after which time she spent a total of 45 days recuperating.
Meanwhile, her new American friends desired to bring her to the United States.
“My team leader and his girlfriend are into animal rescue,” Daniels explained. “She started a GoFundMe account to recoup some of the expenses that he had paid up front. Plus, sending her back to the States cost a lot.”
The fundraiser brought in about $1,400.
However, the shipping cost, which included all the paperwork involved in sending an animal on a three-day trip from Kabul City to Dubai to Amsterdam to Washington, D.C., was a whopping $2,500. That’s not counting all of her medical expenses. However, Daniels and his coworkers made it happen: She arrived in her new nation’s capital back on April 3.
Meanwhile, Daniels, who had already decided to keep her, was on leave.
“I had already planned a sightseeing trip to D.C., so I got her while I was there,” he said, adding an organization, which is called Puppy Rescue Mission, agreed to keep her until he could pick her up.
Daniels will soon be returning to work, leaving Bewler (named after a tool to provide security to American military bases) with Padgett, who is already holding Daniels’ other cat and Daniels’ sister’s dog.
Padgett noted that she was glad to do it.
“What’s another cat?” she joked.
h/t: www.dailyprogress.com
