This shelter cat has completely lost hope that someone will take him home. And then one day, sitting in a cage with an expression of universal sadness and sadness, a ray of hope lit up. They came for him, that very real and long-awaited new family.

Meet BenBen, the cat who was just one day away from being put to sleep. But then a miracle happened, and he not only survived, but also found a new family.

It turned out that only one hour separated BenBen from such a dramatic transformation from the saddest cat in the world to the happiest bundle of orange fur.

For all the time that the cat had to spend in the shelter, he was nicknamed the saddest cat, which became known to the entire Internet community.

When BenBen arrived at the shelter, the workers decided that he was attacked by street animals, since the cat had quite deep cuts on his face, his ear was bitten and his spine was broken.

Of course, how can you remain cheerful in such a situation when you are literally writhing from pain, not only physical, but also mental? And the gloomy muzzle of the redhead spoke about this.

They planned to euthanize BenBen. Shelter workers say that from the expression on the cat’s face, one could safely say that he guessed what fate awaited him.

He stopped eating and drinking. The day before BenBen was to be put down, a woman who works with a veterinary center decided to take the red sufferer into her home!

She said that as soon as they returned home, BenBen immediately changed. After just an hour, he began to smile, purr and wanted to hug.

And all because the cat finally felt safe, he felt loved and was simply happy.

So much happiness for the internet's recently saddest cat! No one expected BenBen to be able to walk again, but he proved otherwise.

BenBen can walk, run and jump, although only for short distances!

Many months have passed and now BenBen’s favorite pastimes are sleeping, playing and trying to taste human food!

Once again we are convinced that love is a powerful force that works miracles!

The 20th century is the same century that the poet Osip Mandelstam called the “wolfhound century” and which killed him in 1938 while being transported to a Vladivostok camp. This wolfhound grabbed hold of the Zhzhenov family early on, killing and ruining the lives of its members.

The father and mother of the future famous artist came from poor peasant families in the Tver province. As a boy, his father moved to St. Petersburg, where he entered the service of a fellow countryman-baker. When he remained a widower and married a young orphan for the second time, he already had five children, and then he began to have children together. They lived poorly and were far from in harmony - the more severe the need became, the more the father drank, drinking away everything that was in the house, and often raising his hand against his wife. Mother was a kind, wise and loving person, and for Georgy Stepanovich she forever remained “my beautiful Mother.”

Vek the Wolfhound first growled and bared his fangs at the Zhzhenovs in 1934, immediately after Kirov’s death. The brother of the future artist, Boris, who was a student at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of the university, unusually talented and showing great promise, turned to the Komsomol organizer of his course with a request to allow him not to go to the funeral. Pointing to his broken shoes, he said: “If I go to the Tauride Palace, I will definitely freeze my feet. What is the point? This will not help Kirov.”

The Komsomol organizer, in the spirit of the new communist morality, immediately reported him. The brilliant student was immediately expelled from the university and deprived of his residence permit in Leningrad. A student expelled from the university spent a whole year knocking on the doors of the prosecutor's office, protesting against the unfair decision. Eventually he was reinstated as a student and returned to Leningrad. And in December 1936 they brought him a summons to the NKVD. He went there and never returned. In 1937, he was sentenced to 7 years for “anti-Soviet activities.” Six years later, he died in Vorkuta from dystrophy, after overstraining himself in a coal mine.

During the last meeting, Boris managed to give his mother several pieces of paper covered with small but legible handwriting. With his characteristic analytical mindset, he, like a surgeon, revealed all the horror of what he saw and experienced in the dungeons of the internal prison of the NKVD, painted a picture of the complete defenselessness of those arrested before the tyranny of blind force, when any arguments of reason and logic are in vain, when those pleasing to the investigation are knocked out of those under investigation through mockery and torture. "confession" and "testimony". Risking his life, he tried in his letter to show the true state of affairs in the justice system.

“To me,” recalled Georgy Stepanovich, “everything I read seemed incredible and terrible... Shocked, I immediately burned the leaves in the stove under my mother’s disapproving gaze. “In vain, son, in vain,” said the mother, “I should have read it properly, more carefully. Who knows, maybe it will come in handy in life.” If only I could imagine how prophetic my mother’s words would be.”

After Boris's conviction, the entire family, that is, father, mother and three sisters, was deported to Kazakhstan. Georgy, who by this time, having graduated from the Leningrad Theater School, had already starred in several films at the Lenfilm film studio, including “The Hero’s Mistake”, “Chapaev”, refused to leave for Kazakhstan. They answered him indifferently: “If you don’t go, we’ll put you in jail.”

In 1938, after filming for director Sergei Gerasimov’s film “Komsomolsk” ended, the young aspiring actor was arrested. As if in a nightmare, Georgy Stepanovich recalled, he listened to how he was accused of establishing a criminal espionage connection with an American who recruited him as a man avenging the fate of his brother.

“It’s very scary when for the first time everything was suddenly stripped away from the concepts of Justice and Humanity beautiful clothes... I was only 22 years old. I was not afraid of physical injuries, no - maybe I could have endured them - I was afraid of madness. If only I knew why you are accepting torment, it would be easier!”

All attempts to somehow resist the bullying of the investigation, when young man with a laugh, they stuck a pencil in their hand and ordered them to sign confessions, which ended with a five-year sentence and a transfer to the terrible Kolyma.

“It probably helped me that when I got to Kolyma, I no longer had any illusions, no faith in justice, which supposedly should triumph, in the law, and so on, no hope for a review of the case. There was only a daily, hourly struggle for physical survival. It's survival. And then, of course, a certain amount of luck. After all, people stronger than me died in the Gulag. In my autobiographical story “Sleigh,” I tell, for example, an episode when I was informed that - oh, miracle! — I suddenly received two parcels sent by my mother. To get them to the camp they had to walk 10 kilometers. I understood that the parcels could save my life, because from constant hunger my strength was diminishing every day and steadily, and I was aware that I would not last long. But I physically couldn’t walk those damned ten kilometers. I just didn't have the strength. And then the second miracle happened: the officer who was returning to the camp took me with him. And when on the way I finally collapsed into the snow, unable to take even a step, and with deep indifference I realized that this was the end, the officer put me on a sled, which he was dragging behind him, and took me away. For a cruel officer, who had long forgotten what compassion is, to carry a prisoner on a sled - it was more than a miracle.

The parcels had been sent by my mother three years earlier, and their contents - lard, sausage, garlic, onions, sweets, tobacco - had long since been mixed up and turned into frozen stone. I looked at these parcels and with the last of my strength resisted the urge to immediately bite into this stone with my teeth. I knew that I would die immediately from a volvulus. I asked the guards not to give me parcels under any circumstances, even if I crawl on my knees and beg for it, but to chop off small pieces three times a day and give them to me. They looked at me with respect and agreed. When I say that I learned not to expect or ask for anything from the camp authorities, and that this helped me survive, I am not exaggerating. In 1943, my term of imprisonment ended and I was given an official document with a coat of arms - another 21 months in the camps were added to my imprisonment. I read it almost indifferently - what else could you expect from this system?

In 1945, I was finally released, and I worked at the Magadan Polar Drama Theater, and in 1947 I came to Moscow for a job assignment. There was a note in my passport that forbade me to live in any large industrial cities where there were film studios. At the request of my teacher, director Sergei Apollinarievich Gerasimov, I was sent to work in Sverdlovsk, where I received temporary registration and began filming the film “Alitet Goes to the Mountains.”

But then, as luck would have it, the film studio was closed, the production of “Alitet” was transferred to Moscow, where I was forbidden to live with my passport. I got hired to work in the city of Pavlov-on-Oka at the local drama theater.

And here in 1949 I was arrested again. I ate prison porridge in Gorky for six months, and then I was sent into exile in northern Norilsk. Why, why, how is this possible - if I tormented myself with these questions, I would quickly go crazy. But as I already said, I didn’t expect anything else from them, I didn’t hope for anything, and that’s why I survived this time.”

“At the Norilsk Drama Theater I met Innokenty Smoktunovsky, with whom we played together. I immediately realized what kind of talent he was. He hid in Norilsk because he was a prisoner of war during the war and was afraid that he would be imprisoned.

I spent a long time trying to persuade Smoktunovsky to go to Moscow, because his talent was immeasurable and did not fit into the small Norilsk theater. He wanted and was afraid, and I understood him. He said that he had no money, and when I offered to lend it to him, he refused. Then I bought him a camera, taught him how to shoot, and he began to earn money by taking photographs in the surrounding villages. Everyone in those years needed a photograph, everyone needed to send news about themselves somewhere. Soon he returned the money to me. I gave him a letter of recommendation to Arkady Raikin, but instead of Leningrad, Smoktunovsky went to Volgograd, where he played minor roles. I didn’t leave him alone there either and literally forced him to go to Moscow, to the Lenkom Theater, where director Mikhail Romm noticed him and cast him in a small film. This is how his rapid ascent to the Olympus of Soviet cinema and theater began, and I am happy that I also helped him in this. Moreover, goodness, as a rule, gives birth to goodness. So Smoktunovsky continued the baton of goodness and brought the wonderful actor Ivan Lapikov to the cinema.

After Georgy Stepanovich returned to Leningrad to his mother and began playing first at the regional drama theater, and then at the Lensovet Theater, his creative destiny changed dramatically. He starred in more than a hundred films from many major directors, became a People's Artist of the USSR, and received literally all the awards of our cinema.

“Once during a trip to Georgia, a country that I love very much, I was invited to a banquet. Magnificent table, incomparable Georgian wines. And yet, a minute after the start of the celebration, I felt that I was caught like chickens in the plucking: Stalin was remembered in almost every toast, they drank to the “father-teacher,” “beacon of humanity,” “the great organizer and inspirer of the victory over fascism.” etc. I couldn’t reconcile and drink with everyone, I knew that my conscience would torture me. Not to drink? Everyone will wait patiently for you to drink. I tried to ask for the floor - where is it going? And suddenly I realized what needed to be done. When the toastmaster made alaverdi to me, I stood up and asked:
Please answer me, does a real Georgian forgive a blood grudge or not?

- No, of course not! - They shouted to me cheerfully from different ends of the table.

- So, a real Russian also does not forgive blood grievances! Believe me, I don’t want to offend anyone sitting at this table... You are all nice, hospitable people. I hope you will understand everything I say correctly and not take what I say personally. - Everyone fell silent, and I continued: - At one time, three Georgians played an ominous role in my fate - Stalin, Beria and Goglidze. Thanks to these people, I spent seventeen years wandering around prisons, camps and exile. Now I find myself in a position where I am forced to drink in memory of one of the three, and I don’t want that and won’t!

The painful silence was broken by one of the ministers, a handsome, gray-haired Georgian. Feigning sympathy on his face, he said:

- Yes, it’s sad, of course. But, dear guest Georgy, do you really think that Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin knew about all this?

- Uh, come on! - I answered sharply. - Agree, it is difficult to believe that the head of state did not know about the fate of almost twenty million of his loyal subjects.
In an awkward silence, the feast immediately ended. Here is the answer to how I feel about the memory of the “father of all nations.”

Formally, I am far from church, I don’t bow, I don’t get baptized. But if God is love, then I am certainly a believer. Because I believe in goodness and always strive to follow the ancient commandment “do good.” On the other hand, when I see how some of our political figures, who had recently been baptized in the portraits of the next General Secretary of the CPSU, defiantly cross themselves in front of the icon, I am both funny and ashamed of their falseness. Everyone’s faith should be deeply their own, personal, and not ostentatious...

Despite everything, I am an optimist, I believe that our people will gradually straighten up, become free and proud, and with them the country will become so.”

This 13 year old cat is named and Charlie suddenly lost control of her hind legs. She could only move by dragging her paws.

The owner brought Charlie to The Cat Doctor, a specialized feline veterinary clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and said that since he himself old man, he will not be able to take good care of a paralyzed cat.

The clinic decided to keep Charlie and try to cure her illness, since she turned out to be a very affectionate and cheerful cat. At first they thought it was all about the so-called Arterial Thromboembolism - when a blood clot in the aorta blocks the blood supply going to the hind limbs. This is a very serious disease.

Cats are particularly prone to arterial thromboembolism compared to other species. Arterial thromboembolism is probably one of the most tragic conditions in the practice of feline diseases, especially because it often occurs without warning. Cat owners are often shocked to find their cat paralyzed and in pain.

But after a thorough examination of Charlie, a heart abnormality was ruled out and the theory was put forward that she most likely had intervertebral disc disease.

To alleviate the cat’s condition, a special “wheelchair” was created for her, but for some reason Charlie completely ignored it. She wanted to move independently, even if crawling.

So Charlie moved around for several weeks, dragging her hind legs behind her. It was not easy for her to do this, since the elderly cat was overweight, but she did not give up. To alleviate Charlie's condition, she was given steroid injections and painkillers.

And suddenly her attempts to walk fully on four legs were suddenly crowned with success. At first the cat walked very unsteadily, but every day she used her hind legs more and more confidently.

“She is now walking almost normally and rarely trips,” says veterinarian Miriam from The Cat Doctor. “She is a very good pet and loves to sit on her lap and purr. We are confident that our medications have helped improve her condition, "They reduced the inflammation in the spine. And her own attempts to walk helped too, she is such a determined and persistent cat!"

Charlie did not return it to its former owner, but hopes to find her new house, where she can be fully looked after if she has another attack. She will also need to take certain medications continuously for the rest of her life.