Lina is short for Zmrzlina, which is Czech for "ice cream" and very difficult for most Americans to say. I first saw her when she was 5 days old. My sister called her a "black tabby" and that's certainly what she looked like.

I almost lost Lina before I even got to adopt her. She and her littermates had fleas. According to the label, we couldn't use Advantage on them until they were 8 weeks old. Lina almost didn't make it past 7 weeks. She became severely anemic and had only 4% red blood cells by the time we got her to the emergency vet.

The vet gave her a blood transfusion by injecting a healthy cat's blood into her tummy. She was too small to find a vessel. He gave her a 10% chance of living. That was on a Thursday. By the end of the weekend, she was sitting up and eating! That was a big surprise to the vet!

I had had a lot of people praying for her, and she survived. She was a miracle. So she deserved a miracle name: Raphaelle, which means "Healed by God" as I believe she was. I feminized it in the same manner (French) my own name is. So now she's officially Zmrzlina Raphaelle.

Lina is now a healthy nearly 7-year-old with luxiourious fur, and not so much of a black tabby. She's mostly brown. She's got some Maine Coon in her, as you can see by her tail and ruff, if not size.

She takes to hiding when someone comes over, but she's a sweet cat who loves to be petted, once she gets to know you.

Update: Zmrzlina Raphaelle passed away October 20th, 2020. In the previous fall, she's started losing weight. At her April exam, the vet saw what looked like squamus cell carcinoma in her throat. Inoperable and nothing they could do at her age. She was 16. She wasn't ready to go yet though. She starting having trouble eating, so we blended her food to liquify it. But she had enough of that after awhile and left her bowl to eat Poodle's moist food. So we let her struggle as that seemed what she wanted. Her saliva grew thick so she gummed up her fur when she groomed. We had her shaved and bought a couple small doggie sweaters to keep her warm. She continued to lose weight. On July 15, she turned 17 years. I'd known her 5 days less than 17 years. 7 weeks later marked the 17 years I'd had with her after God healed her. She held on a bit longer still, until October 19th, late at night, she signaled that she was ready. We took her to the vet to ease her passing. I loved her dearly and miss her to this day.