As told by our founder & executive director; content warning for depression & ideation

In 2010, I had just moved into my first home with my kids and then-spouse. We already had 2 kittens who we had received from a fairly inappropriate environment. In April that year, this really snuggly black cat kept coming around. She was so friendly, and since she was wearing a dark green collar, we assumed she had a home. Nevertheless, my spouse kept iterating that we would not be keeping her. I agreed, because obviously she had a home. Silly.

She came around for about 2 weeks, hanging out with us every day and acting like she owned the joint. She would even invite herself into the house and tell our own cats what was what. I was a smoker at the time, and at about 11:00 one evening, I could hear her distinctive mew, but she wasn't coming up to greet me. I called to her, and finally she came limping out from the shadows, clearly in pain. Baaaah, fffflower trucks. It was well past the close of any veterinary clinic, so of course with a limp that bad she had to get to the emergency clinic. Welp. Nothing for it, I gathered her up and we headed over. Once there, they asked me for a name. I had no idea what her name was, she wasn't my cat. Well, they asked, who would pay the bill? I knew I had to, so I just figured I would find her guardian and square up with them later 

As they removed that forest green collar, some of her skin came with it. In that moment, I knew she could never leave the house again. So, off the top of my head I named her Audrey and told them to do as was needed. A spay, some reconstruction, and a femoral shave later, miss Audrey was in a new home. She made herself Queen of the castle and ruled it with an iron paw. But she also loved fiercely. Her head bunts could make you see stars, and waking up to her choosing to head bunt your bum was - well, it was certainly an experience and it woke you all the way up. She would twine herself between my legs as I zipped around the kitchen making dinner, and without fail she would be at the door when I got home from work or wherever I happened to be, telling on everyone in the house and demanding I pay her mind.

In 2017, I fell into a deep depression. It got so bad, that I had made my final arrangements and was getting ready to get into the car to do what I felt at the time was needful. For some reason, I decided that before I got into the car, I needed to just feel my pillow against my face one last time. I could find so few pleasures in my life at the time because of the cloak of darkness that depression had thrown over my view of the world that to find even that small one was something I had to indulge. As soon as I laid down, Audrey hopped up on the bed giving her wow-meow and her little chirp. I just sort of looked at her, disappointed in how unfulfilling the damned pillow was, and closed my eyes. I felt her teeny tiny stiletto feet approaching me (she had tiny feet but was no tiny cat!) and suddenly this breathy purr hit my ears as the pressure of her head laid on my left hip was everything I knew in the world. She was telling me it wasn't time to go, that for as lonely and awful the world felt at the time, she needed me to stick around. In that moment, she saved my life. From the outside, it must have looked like such a simple scene, a woman laying on her bed with a cat purring next to her. But for me, everything shifted. I realized in that moment that I had much to live for, including her. We had been inseparable since she arrived, and that's how we remained until she passed away from pancreatic cancer in March of 2019.

Audrey was the first cat I had rescued as an adult, but she certainly wouldn't be the last. It is because of her saving of my life and her launching my passion for rescue that the rescue is named after her.