A Powell cat shelter has been awarded a $5,000 grant thanks to a former customer.
Cozy Cat Cottage, located at 10344 Sawmill Road, received the Petco Foundation Holiday Wishes grant after Powell resident Deborah Miller submitted the story of her adoption of her cat, Pierre, from the shelter. Miller’s story was selected out of thousands of submissions as one of 105 winners, and a check presentation was made Dec. 13.
Miller visited Cozy Cat Cottage last November in search of a new friend after the passing of her old friend. She settled in on the floor to play with the many kitties who came over to check her out. But one in particular made his presence known right away.
“(Pierre) just hustled his way right into my lap, and he stayed there the entire time,” she said. Asked if there was an instant connection between her and Pierre, Miller said she likes to think so, adding that Pierre certainly seemed to suggest so.
“He gives us something to talk about every day, he just kind of pushes his way on through,” Miller said of what Pierre has meant to her family. “If you’re not in a good mood, he doesn’t care. He just makes you smile, the stuff he does. And I think that’s given my husband and I something to talk about when we would normally go off and do our own thing. We have this little being in common.”
Miller said she submitted her story to the Petco Foundation’s Holiday Wishes program out of gratitude for Cozy Cat Cottage’s love and care for Pierre prior to adoption, as well as the other cats there.
“You can see when you go in there that the kitties are loved,” she said. “I have been to other shelters, and I did not get that sense that the volunteers knew the individual cats.”
She went on to say, “If you go onto their Facebook page, you can see that they genuinely love what they do, and that kind of supersedes everything else. You can see that in the cats, that they are loved.”
As for what she hopes the grant will mean for Cozy Cat Cottage, Miller said, “I hope it means two things. One, in some small way, that we can repay our gratitude for Pierre, and I really, genuinely mean that. The joy that he has brought to our home every day. And secondly, in some small measure, it helps them to continue with the great work they are already doing.”
For more information on Cozy Cat Cottage, visit its website at www.cozycatcottage.org.
