Mud, Blood, and One Wild Rescue

“Stop the car!” cried Willow! “Pull over here,” my sister continued frantically.

Mom quickly pulled off and parked in front of a retail strip mall.

“What’s going on?” Mom inquired.

There was no time to explain. Willow exploded out of the car, sprinted across the parking lot, then charged a minivan that was about to take off, yelling “STOOOOOP!”

The soccer mom was either won over by Willow’s sweet face or afraid for her life. Either way, the driver didn’t run my sister over as Willow got on all fours.

“There’s a kitty next to your tire!!!”

The lady looked relieved that she hadn’t run anything over and that Willow was merely a crazy cat lady and not a total whack job.

The tiny tortoise shell was quivering, couldn’t have been more than a pound – clearly malnourished by the looks of her ribs sticking out. When Willow reached under the vehicle, the little kitty took off, then hightailed it through a sea of cars, disappearing into an overgrown wooded area at the far end of the strip.

Hot in pursuit, Willow ran into the bramble, crawled through a thicket of thorns, traversed down a ravine full of poison ivy, fell into a legit quagmire, sunk down to her knees, almost lost a flip-flop in the muck, was scratched and bloodied and muddied, but by golly, Willow crawled out of that bush with a cat!

Willow was well aware that feral cats won’t let you kittynap them without first putting up a fight. This wasn’t her first rodeo. She was getting sliced open, bitten, hissed at – almost dropped the thing until she instinctively placed the little beasty over her bosom. As soon as she heard a heartbeat, the little furball melted into Momma and calmed down. She was home.

Meanwhile, Mom and Grandma were thoroughly confused, waiting in their car. When Willow walked up toting the tortoise shell, they didn’t question the mud or the blood or the leaves in her hair. It made perfect sense. Just another day in the life of the Wonderful World of Willow. And now, Tiki.

Tiki Cummerbund Quagmire Jones, that is.

Bonus quagmire story!

Believe it or not, I’ve got another quagmire one. My sister Willow rescues kittens from quagmires. I almost drowned in one, but in slow motion, in front of hundreds of people in Nashville, TN. Different quagmires, same family tradition.

Another CRAZY pet rescue

Our pug took shrooms and finally understands jazz now ... but still hates it

A true story about zoomies, zen and Zoloft 👇