Erin Keller remembers feeling an inexplicable tug on her heart to return to the home that she and her husband had just vacated. She felt that she simply must retrieve the stray cat that she’d been feeding for months before they moved.
Her husband had worried that the cat belonged to someone.
“But nobody I asked in the neighborhood knows her,” Keller protested.
Scanning her former neighborhood, the young woman stepped out of her car. Suddenly, the previously wary cat ran to her and unexpectedly snuggled into her open arms, she told The Epoch Times.
Putting the animal into a carrier, she knew it was the right decision to adopt the apparently abandoned feline.
She never imagined that decision was the answer to three years of prayer by an elderly man more than 1,000 miles away.
‘This Isn’t Your Cat!’
It was 2016, and the young couple doted on the fluffy stray. But when they took her to a veterinarian for a checkup, they received devastating news. The vet was confiscating her. A microchip showed that she belonged to someone else.“This isn’t your cat,” a vet tech said sternly. “We’re keeping her!”
Stunned and saddened, the Kellers stared at each other, unsure of what to do. Then, the door to the exam room opened again.
“There’s a problem,” a clinic staffer told them. In checking the microchip database, they’d tracked down the cat’s elderly owner.
“And he wants to talk to you,” the employee said with a frown and passed them a phone.
Moments later, Erin Keller and the old man were in tears as they made sense of what had happened.
William Dorsch explained that he had lost his beloved Ladybug three years earlier while on a road trip from his South Florida home to Ohio. He was moving to be closer to family. Ladybug had slipped out of the car during a stop at a restaurant in a traffic-choked area of Tampa, Florida. The Kellers lived nearby.
Dorsch said that he’d delayed his trip, desperately searching for his pet. Three days later, with hope depleted, he moved on, reluctantly leaving the 12-year-old cat behind. But he never stopped praying for news that she was safe.
“Do you love her?” he pleaded through tears.
He knew that he was moving to a care facility that wouldn’t allow pets, he explained.
“Yes!” Erin said, sniffling. “We’ll love her forever!”
Dorsch told the vet that he was releasing ownership, and the Kellers took the elderly cat home.
“[I had] goosebumps everywhere—him talking about his years of praying for her that she had found somewhere [to live],“ Erin Keller said. ”[He was] grateful and relieved to know that she was alive.”
Purr-fect Friendship
That started years of correspondence. Dorsch sent the Kellers photos of his Ladybug with his other cat, Will. He sent cards stuffed with checks that he labeled “for cat food.”But the checks were never cashed. They were placed in a box alongside the letters and photos.
Meanwhile, the Keller family grew. A baby girl arrived. Then another baby girl. And the beloved orange cat—eventually dubbed Pusskin—adopted a new role: keeping watch over the children.
Seven years after her rescue, the pumpkin-colored feline now strolls regally through the Keller family’s active Florida home. She follows the blond-haired girls as they play in their wooded yard. She sits in their laps while they complete homeschool lessons. She visits their bedsides when it’s time for them to be tucked in at night.
“Wherever the girls go, she goes,” their mother said. “She even follows them on the trampoline when they’re jumping. Cats don’t do that. She’s more like a dog in that she’s always with us.”
During phone conversations, the Kellers delighted Dorsch with updates on the kitty’s adventures.
Then, about two years ago, they realized that the cards had stopped coming. Dorsch had mentioned a cancer battle. They called his number. There was no answer. Searching online, the Kellers found an obituary.
They never were able to connect with his family. But they treasure the letters, the photos, and the realization that their devotion to a stray ultimately healed a kind old man’s broken heart.
To them, the connection still seems more divinely inspired than accidental.
And to them, the chance to bring him peace was a priceless treasure. Just like their orange cat.
