'So Touching You Could Cry': Heartwarming and Humorous Stories from Kemerovo Pet Owners

While the frost and cold rage outside the window, the editorial team of NGS42.RU decided to share with you stories from Kemerovo residents that can warm the soul during this cold winter period. We have collected several touching real stories from our readers about help, love, and tenderness for our smaller brothers. What follows — all stories in the first person.

Kirill, 39 years old. «And Who is This Petrovich?»

A few years ago I worked as an electrician at a strip mine. One morning I come in for my shift, and the men in the break room are sitting there sad and silent. I approach them, a bit tipsy: «What»s up, guys, why the long faces?« And they tell me: »Petrovich died.« And fall silent again.

I sit down next to them and start thinking, it«s a shame about the guy, of course, but I just couldn»t remember who this Petrovich was. I realize I didn«t seem to know him. I»d already gone through everyone in my head: the mechanic, the driver, the miner. And they are looking at me like I«m a fool and say: »That was our local dog that lived here at the mine, we«re really sorry for the poor animal.» I«ve never seen such grief and tears for a street dog again.

Marina, 19 years old. Fluffy Workers

When I was six years old, I decided that something was terribly missing in the house. And since a six-year-old didn«t have money for anything material, we soon got a wonderful cat. She had only one desire — to earn the »Mother Heroine« medal (a Soviet award for mothers with many children). But due to health problems, as well as the consequences of life in a dump, her kittens were never born alive. And since the only one guarding my childish psyche was my grandfather, he figured out how to explain their absence without showing them to me.

When she had kittens again, he would say that the work crew at the factory was short of hands and needed help in the form of little paws, and so he would take them away. A legend emerged about an entire workshop where «little tails» worked. At dinner after work, he would tell stories about how they fulfilled the production plan, even better than people, how they made special hard hats for them because real ones were too big, how they bravely went into the hottest workshop because they had fur and it protected them.

That cat lived with us for a long fifteen years, during which she supplied several factories with fluffy workers. Although she never became a mother herself, she raised the neighborhood cats sensibly, bloodying their noses if they dared to come near our fence.

Sergei, 24 years old. Saving Private Vas«ka

With us, it«s usually like this: if it»s a homeless tomcat, it«s Vasya, if it»s a female cat, it«s Murka. Once we got a kitten — Vasily Vasilyevich. One day he hid somewhere, we thought he»d get hungry and come out. We searched everywhere, but nothing, he«d vanished completely. I got the idea to stick my head out the window and I see — he»s sitting on the building entrance«s canopy.

My father immediately set about rescuing him. He went into the entrance hall and climbed out onto the canopy through the window. Why not go back the same way? No, my dad — quite the parkour enthusiast — decided, while wearing slippers, to jump down to the asphalt with the cat under his arm. The result — a fracture of both legs. Well, the cat is fine, still lives with us.

Ulyana, 21 years old. Kesha or Kasha?

Once we bought a cockatiel parrot, they were incredibly popular back then. The breeder assured us it was a male, you know, the crest is right, the coloring, the plumage — definitely a boy. We wanted a male ourselves, because they are smarter and it«s usually the males that learn to talk.

We took the parrot, named him Kesha. He lived with us for about a year, I tried to work with him, taught him to chatter, but he never started talking. «What a hopeless case,» I thought. But he sure screamed constantly. One day he was screaming especially horribly, and then he presented us with offspring in the form of an egg. In the end, Kesha became Kasha, and in the future — a happy mother of two little parrots.

Nadya, 15 years old. Survived Survivalist Courses

Our cat ran away once. He did that often, but always came back, but this time — he was gone for maybe five days. So one day mom is walking to the kindergarten to pick up my sister, and that building is far from us, on the other side of the city. They gathered their things, walked out, and some black cat jumps out of the bushes at them, covered in burrs, tail puffed up, and wouldn«t leave them alone. He starts screaming hysterically and trembling, running. So they walked all the way to the apartment building entrance like that. In the end, mom took a closer look and realized it was ours. Only before he was ginger. Where he»d been, no one ever found out, we spent the next two weeks washing him and cutting garbage out of his fur. You couldn«t look at such a tormented creature without tears.

Yulia, 20 years old. Return from the Other Side

A couple of months ago I called my parents. My dog, whom I found 12 years ago, lives with them. They tell me: «We»re going to have him put to sleep, he«s so old and the poor thing is in a bad way. Why torture him any longer?» Medication only helped temporarily, the poor thing suffered even in his sleep, whimpering quietly when he turned over or changed position.

It got to the point where he could stand in one spot for a long time, afraid to take the next step. In the end, however radical the decision seemed, my parents couldn«t bear to watch it either. They were determined because they didn»t want to torment the dog until his natural death. I thought I had cried my eyes out, I had already buried him inside myself.

Imagine my surprise when, upon arriving home, I was greeted by an active, cheerful dog whose energy would be the envy of even a young puppy. He was so happy, jumping so much, that I thought my parents had played a cruel joke on me. What kind of magic — I couldn«t understand it for a very long time. I thought I was dreaming or that the dog had been resurrected, or maybe healed by the »power of love.« In the end — he»s doing well and, I hope, he will live with us for many more years.

Previously, the editorial team wrote about the most expensive cats and dogs in the region.