It was a cold and windy day in Valdese, North Carolina, when Avery Rogers clocked in for a shift at her family’s food truck, Lucky Dogs NC. She was expecting to spend the next few hours serving food to hungry customers when a small, furry animal across the parking lot caught her attention.
“I didn’t know if she was stray or feral or what the situation was,” Rogers told The Dodo.
Customers confirmed that the mystery animal was a cat, and after a while, Rogers realized that the cat was inching closer to the truck.
“A lot of people think she could smell the food from our truck,” Rogers said. “Maybe that’s why she kept coming closer.”
Eventually, the cat got so close to the food truck that she started using the customers’ parked cars as shelter. Rogers kept a watchful eye on her and eventually offered her the only treat she had.
“About halfway through my shift, I set out some water for her and a hot dog,” Rogers said.
Although cats don’t typically eat hot dogs, Rogers watched as the hungry cat devoured it in just a few bites. The cat then spent the rest of Rogers’ shift hanging around the food truck.
As soon as Rogers’ shift was over, she walked over to the cat to see if she would come up to her.
“I was fully prepared for her to run away, but she walked right up to me.”
You can watch the cat walk up to Rogers and ask to be loved here:
Instead of running away, the cat immediately snuggled up in her new friend’s arms. Even though she was alone, she seemed healthy, which Rogers believes is a sign someone intentionally left her there.
“She was very clean and very sweet,” Rogers said. “It seemed like she’d been dumped.”
Rogers immediately decided to take the cat home with her. She called her husband, who met them in the parking lot with a cat carrier.
Before bringing the cat home, Rogers took her to the vet to check for a microchip. To her surprise, nothing came up. The cat was officially hers.
As an ode to her food truck’s most popular hot dog, the Bluetick Hound, Rogers named the cat Blue.
Blue got a clean bill of health at the vet, who estimated her to be around 1 year old, then headed home to start the best chapter of her life.
Now, Blue spends her days curled up on her favorite bed in her new forever home. She’s still in the beginning stages of getting to know her cat siblings, Bagheera, Bear, Blake and Benley, but Rogers knows that she’ll soon fit right in. As for now, she’s just enjoying all the snuggles she can get.
“She’s 100 percent a lap cat,” Rogers said. “She just kind of lays around wherever we are.”
Some might say that Rogers found Blue at the perfect time, but Rogers thinks it’s the other way around. Soon after finding Blue, one of Rogers’ childhood cats, Bentley, was given a prognosis of one to two days to live. Blue suddenly became an unexpected and much-needed source of comfort for Rogers.
“It’s a hard time, but she’s so cuddly,” Rogers said. “She showed up right when we needed her.”
