When Deb handed me her book last summer in June, hoping it would get me inspired to design a book cover for it, I had no idea what a great journey I was embarking on. Granted, there were no mountains to climb and monsters to fight (but the metaphoric ones, of course), this was rather one of those extraordinarily ordinary experiences, perfectly in tune with the book’s subtitle.

And the journey began with, well… a journey, a real one. I was boarding a plane to go visit my family in Romania for three weeks, so I figured – what better reading material than something light and easy? The story managed to captivate me and I often found myself laughing out loud and reading pieces of it to my family.

No spoiler alert necessary – I won’t be telling you of the book, that’s yours to discover when the time comes.  But I’d like to share a little story that truly impressed us and it so happens that it happened while I was reading the book (but there are no coincidences, right?).

Our long-awaited vacation in Romania (where I hadn’t been in two years) turned out to be terrible in many ways: the weather was awful and we were home-bound for most of the three weeks. Despite being June, it was terribly cold, it was raining continuously and I had caught the worst cold of my life, complete with sore throat, coughing, watery eyes and the whole nine yards. One such a cold rainy night my husband Eric and I decided to brave the weather and give a ride to my sister Jonie to take Oscar, her golden retriever to the vet where he was going to be, well… neutered. Since we had a couple of hours to kill before picking up Oscar, we decided to head back home. And as we were heading to the car, we heard, in the parking lot, some shrieking sounds that to me sounded like a bird cawing. It was dark, it was raining, and very cold… And then I see Eric run to the edge of the parking lot and coming back with this soaking wet… creature that turned out to be a kitten. It was shivering so hard and it had a bloody nose too, runny and swollen eyes – it was a picture of pity. My first thought was – oh no! Eric picked up another stray… (he does have a track record) but then I too thought, it was impossible to leave the poor soul out in the rain on a night like this.

Since we were in a small town with only one vet (and that one was in surgery with Oscar), we had no choice but to bring the kitten home to my parents… To my Dad’s desperation, when we entered the door and said “ I can explain!” The decision was “it’s only for tonight”. We didn’t know how bad was the kitty injured so we instantly convoked my med student sister Julie for a thorough physical. It turned out the bloody nose was nothing serious, but she did have a bad cold and needed to be warmed up, which we did, of course, with a blow drier.

Rough first morning

It wasn’t an easy night for any of us. Kitty slept all evening and then decided to cry all night and keep the entire house awake. She was in such bad shape, she wouldn’t eat or even drink water, and we had no idea how old she was, so we spent the night on the internet trying to figure that out and how we could feed her the next morning. Because she was so small and in such a bad shape we thought she would be about 4 weeks old, so I ran to the pharmacy to buy an eyedropper, then I tried to feed her milk. She wouldn’t have it. By late morning, she was in such a bad shape (both eyes swollen and breathing with great difficulty, also barely moving) that I had almost come to terms with the fact that we’ll go to the vet to have her put down. I have cried my eyes out all the way to the vet and as soon as I got there the vet looks at her and says – well, she’s about two months old, she’s got a cold and conjunctivitis and she’ll be perfectly fine in three days. My day just got a lot brighter. She wasn’t fine in three days – but in two! She transformed from that wet blob of fur into the cutest and most lovable kitten I had every met! We would take her to get antibiotic shots every day and put drops in her eyes. She was also infested with fleas, but one bath later she was all better. She was so soft and cuddly and she would purr on your chest and give kisses and be so grateful that we had saved her life.

Eric's fuzzy shadow

In Eric's pocket

Needless to say that “only for tonight” turned into “more than a week”… Because when kitty got all better from the cold, her troubles – and ours – still weren’t over. One night, Julie had her in her room, hoping that we would get some sleep. Early morning she came into our room and said “I think you cat is having seizures”. She would freeze all of a sudden and get really stiff, fall on one side and twist her paw in a very weird way, then, a few seconds later, she would shake her head and be “normal” again, but very disoriented. She must have had about 12 seizures by the time we got to take her to the vet – again in tears, thinking that that’s it, she isn’t going to make it, she must have had some trauma the night we found her. It was so painful to watch this tiny creature so tortured by seizures. But the doctor said calmly – she’s not going to die, this is definitely from the food. Stop feeding her the wet cat food and switch her to home cooked food.

And again kitty – which in the meanwhile we named Itsy – rose from the dead to everyone’s surprise. She spent about 3 of her 7 lives, but she was the happiest kitty ever. It wasn’t even hard to find her a home. Mom wanted to keep her, but Dad wouldn’t agree, so we took her to the country at my Grandma’s – who totally melted when she saw how loving and lovely Itsy was. It was so hard to leave her behind, especially since, to me, she was the perfect cat – a happy fur blob purring in your lap and cuddling whenever you liked it. I love the two cats I have at home – Tux and Skittles – but God knows they are no lap cats. But to transport a kitten from Romania to the States would have been madness – not to mention too stressful for the poor animal.

Itsy and I in Grandma's garden

Itsy still lives happily at my Grandma’s little farm, where she truly thrived. Only the name doesn’t fit her anymore… she has become quite a large cat. Hugey would be a better name. And I, whenever I see Deb’s Chronicles, will always remember the tiny fuzzy creature we saved in a parking lot on a cold rainy night in my hometown.