3:09
Shelter cat Bruce Willis will not stop purring
The Animal Humane Society in Minnesota posted about a cat who looked like he had stopped expecting anything good. A woman scrolling through Instagram saw it and couldn't keep going. more
His name at the shelter was Bruce Willis. He was a former tomcat who had likely lived outside for several years, and whatever those years held, they showed on his face. It broke her heart.
When she got to the shelter, Bruce was sitting in his kennel in a little room, not doing much of anything. She knew before she left that room that she wasn't going without him. Soon the two of them were home. "Welcome home, Bruce," she told him.
The cat who sat so still in his kennel didn't sit still at home. He walked the whole house, room after room, and he purred almost from the moment he got inside. Then he kept on purring.
The change shows first in his eyes. In the shelter they were flat and sad. At home they open wide, and he turns his head around the room as if checking that all of it is real, then turns back to his new mom for more petting. Somewhere in there he starts kneading, which is about as content as a cat can look.
SaveHis first dinner was at the dinner table. In the days after, he found the special treats and the empty boxes and decided both were his. He played with his mom. He stayed close to her, and she stayed close to him.
On the sixth day he started to snuggle. After that he was a happy cat, one who liked to sleep on the couch and liked, more than anything, to be wherever she was.
The shut-down face from the shelter post is gone. In its place is a fluffy ginger cat with wide-open eyes, who never strays far from the woman who stopped scrolling.
