On Valentine’s Day, a woman heard crying coming from her backyard. There, she found an orange tabby, standing in the snow and looking a little worse for wear.
The cat pawed at her door, meowing as if to ask for help.
The woman, a foster volunteer with Un Chat à la Fois, a kitten rescue in Quebec, messaged Marie Simard with a photo of the cat. “She said she knew we were not taking adult cats and was looking to help him,” Simard, founder of Un Chat à la Fois, told The Dodo. “As soon as I saw the picture it broke my heart, and I told her to take him to our partner clinic so he could be evaluated.”
“His face said everything that needed to be said,” she added. “He stayed in front of her door for a while, and as soon as I told her to get him, he didn’t try to get away.”
At the clinic, the vet discovered that the cat did indeed need help. He was covered in bite wounds, fleas and ticks and was suffering from frostbite, rotten teeth and diabetes. Simard knew if the stray hadn’t asked for the attention he so desperately needed, there was no way he would have made it through another freezing winter.
Despite his weakened state, the cat was just grateful to be around people again. “He was very nice to the employees at the clinic,” Simard said. “He would take his paw out of the cage at the vet so the people would pet him.”
Simard named the cat Aslan, after the lion in “The Chronicles of Narnia” series. After a few days of treatment at the clinic, Aslan’s health improved and he went to live in a foster home, where he quickly became friends with his new mom’s cats.
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