The inspiration of a little cat has led to a big bonus for both his rescue organization and the life of his adoptive mom.

“When Freddie and I go for our daily strolls around the retirement community where we live, people love to ask ‘How’s Freddie?’” begins Joanne Gobbi’s winning story in the Petco Foundation’s 2016 Holiday Wishes Campaign. Gobbi was one of 54 finalists in the contest whose winning stories about how their rescued pets changed their lives received grants for the rescue group or shelter where the adoption took place.

Gobbi’s story tells how she adopted Freddie, a coal-black cat who was amazingly calm at the presentation of the $5,000 grant to Helen Sanders Cat Paws at the Petco located at the Marina Shores Center at Second Street and PCH. Gobbi had lost her beloved cat, Ozzie, to an illness in August 2015, and she was devastated to the point of not being able to even look at a cat without crying.

Gobbi describes herself as a “typical cat person—private, shy and introverted.” A few years before Ozzie’s death, she’d lost her mother, to whom she felt close, and isolated herself from neighbors. Ozzie had provided companionship and a haven for her emotions. Gobbi loved the cat as only one who’s loved a pet can understand and was just as devastated by his death.

After her grief had subsided, Gobbi made a New Year’s resolution to start looking online at cats in rescues. “Mind you, I was only going to look,” she insisted. But ooking at photos just reminded her of Ozzie and how none of the pictures measured up.

One day, Gobbi just happened to be at the Marina Shores Petco for no reason that she could give an explanation for, but you know where this is going. Helen Sanders CatPAWS, a nonprofit volunteer cat-rescue-and-welfare organization, centered in Seal Beach, has an adoption center there, and Freddie was in one of the little condos.

“There he was, my next true love,” Gobbi wrote. “When Freddie turned those stunning green eyes on me, I felt my heart melt, and I knew this was the cat for me. I was sure that finding a forever home with me would change his life; what I wasn’t prepared for was how much my life would change because of him.”

The volunteers at the rescue warned Gobbi that Freddie was inclined to be feisty and attempt to dart out the door, but Gobbi found a way to respond to Freddie’s need for adventure and the outdoors. She taught him to wear a harness and walk on a leash—no mean feat or paws—and strolled around her retirement community with him. Soon, she found herself opening up to her neighbors and passing forward the joys of cat personhood.

“Being in a retirement community, I noticed that many of the residents had given up pet ownership because they were physically unable to care for them,” Gobbi wrote. “Seeing and petting Freddie gives them a great deal of joy and reminds them of pets they once had.”

Petco staff, Petco Foundation representatives, Helen Sanders CatPAWS volunteers and winning-story writer Joanne Gobbi gathered for the awards presentation. Freddie even said a couple of words. Photo by Kris Weston.

“Our staff read all of the stories, and we all had tissue boxes at hand,” said Mary Ann Magana, the grant-administration manager for the Petco Foundation. “We are now able to award CatPAWS with a grant because of this story.”

Magana said that funds for the Petco Foundation are raised through customer donations at the registers at each of Petco’s 1,400 locations. Shoppers are requested at checkout to make a donation for a homeless animal; all money collected goes to rescues like Cat PAWS as well as other rescues and shelters, adoption, spay/neuter procedures, pet-cancer research, and pet-therapy- and service-animal organizations. Since 1999, the Petco Foundation has raised over $170 million dollars in this way.

At the ceremony, Magana thanked the Petco staff members for asking customers to donate toward these efforts. CatPAWS cofounder Annelle Baum thanked the Foundation for the grant, and Gobbi and Freddie for story and the inspiration, respectively.

“We are grateful and honored to receive a $5,000 grant from the Petco Foundation in its Holiday Wishes campaign for the poignant story submitted by Joanne, about how Freddie has changed her life,” reads a post on Cat PAWS’ Facebook page.

As for Joanne Gobbi, she’s received her own grant in the form of Freddie the cat, and her neighbors share in it.

“Because of Freddie, I now have a wide circle of ‘cat people’ friends, and my life has been immeasurably enriched,” Gobbi wrote.

Love does not come in finite, limited quantities.

Joanne Gobbi’s story can be read in full here.

To help support the Petco Foundation, please accept the invitation to donate at checkout. You can purchase one of these calendars at any of the stores as well.

And you can have one calendar in each room! Helen Sanders CatPAWS is offering an end-of-the-year sale for their Show Us Your Kitties Calendar. All funds go to help with adoption, vet bills and spay/neuter for the CatPAWS cats. To order yours, click on this link.

“Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash. That one is the cat.”

~ Mark Twain Notebook, 1894

“Didn’t you also say ‘Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please’?”

Joanne and Freddie Gobbi, with my apologies to Mr. Twain