When we agreed to adopt Toes after the rabies quarantine, the shelter offered to spay her for free. It might have been a condition of the adoption, but regardless of whether it was required or not, David and I were happy have her fixed. Taking on one cat was enough, we didn’t want to bear responsibility for a litter of kittens down the line.
We made arrangements to have the procedure performed before we brought her home to be our outdoor cat. But when we went to pick her up, the shelter workers had some interesting news for us. When they opened up Toes to spay her, they found she’d already been spayed.
Even though she wasn’t spayed again, because she’d been opened up, she needed time to recover after the operation. We were advised to keep her indoors to protect her from the elements. We couldn’t bring her into the house because I’m allergic to cats. Luckily, we have a garage that doesn’t share any doors or airflow with our house.
We set Toes up in there with a bed, kitty litter, and food and water to recover. The setup worked so well that the garage was soon dubbed the Toes Palace. And that’s how Toes went from being our potential outdoor cat to becoming our neighbor cat with her own residence.
Toes still goes outside as evidenced in the picture below. You’ll notice also in this picture that her left ear is clipped. This indicates that she’s an outdoor cat that’s been fixed in case she ever gets picked up by animal control again. So they won’t try to spay her a third time! 
Sarah Zureick-Brown 
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