Honeymooning Couple Get Unexpected Wedding Gift of Abandoned Cat and the Story Is Perfect

There are many good gifts to get a couple for a wedding. Naturally, if they have a registry, they’ve already picked some out for you. But if you want to get creative you can always spring for options like a romantic dinner for two at a favorite restaurant, a special holiday ornament to commemorate their first year together, or a pair of engraved glasses with which they can taste their union. And of course, no young couple is going to turn down a heartfelt card and a nice check.

But few expect to wind up with an animal as a wedding present. Yet this cat had other ideas, and when the bride heard him crying in a cage on her neighbor’s porch, she knew she had no choice but to rescue him.

Adelaide Welden of Detroit first noticed the cat crying on her neighbor’s porch when she left in the morning. In the even, she realized it was still there. The inside of the carrier was covered in the cat’s waste, and the animal itself was nothing but skin and bones. The male cat had been left in a carrier on the neighbor’s porch.

Related: Man Shocked to Discover Rescue Cat Remembers Exactly Where He Was Picked Up as a Stray

Concerned for the animal’s welfare, she retrieved it from the carrier and brought it into her house for a meal and a wash. According to Welden, the neighbors did not remark upon the missing carrier or the animal inside. It is unknown whether the animal belonged to the neighbors, and when Welden called the local animal services, she discovered that since the animal was not in immediate danger, there was no reason to investigate further.

She decided to lay claim to the creature, who appeared to relish the attention. He snuggled, he purred, and he happily made himself at home. Welden decided to name the cat Atlas, and reflected that it made for a perfect wedding gift, as she was hoping to get a cat to go along with her dog.

“A wedding, moving, and a new cat all in one week,” she said.

A Long Road Ahead

Soon, she was able to take the feline into the vet to check its health. The vet said that it was near starvation, weighing only six pounds when it ought to be closer to ten. The doctor estimated Atlas to be four or five years old, and also noted lumps in its belly that might be tumors, or even just his kidneys.

For now, though, they are focused on getting Atlas’s weight up, and making him comfortable in his new home. “He's allowed to eat as much as he wants to,” Welden writes.

Rescue or Stealing?

As for the neighbors, they have not come back looking for their cat, and as far as Walden’s concerned, he’s hers now.

She’s not alone, either. In the comments, many people claim to have stolen their pets from terrible circumstances as well.

“I stole someone’s dog for similar reasons,” said one. “They left him outside despite the fact we were having tornado warnings, and the night after that, they left him outside in freezing rain. I broke part of the fence and got him.”

“I found my cat in a culvert at about five weeks old with a torn-up plastic bag nearby he'd escaped from. They meant him to drown in the pond. He's now two and my world,” said another.

We hope for all the best for Atlas in his new home.

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