Page 21 - Trending Magazine 2018 Summer

By Erin DeBooy

f anyone ever calls Crystal Smitzniuk a crazy cat lady, she said
she takes it as a compliment.
I A mom of two “fur babies” — a female cat named Misty and a male
named Stormy — Smitzniuk said the nickname is kind of accurate
since she loves them both like crazy.
“We love having cats in our house … both of them have their
own unique personalities. They’re funny at times, they’re annoying
at times, but they’re always around, and you miss them if they’re
not,” Smitzniuk said. “They’re part of our family. My husband and I
don’t have kids, so we have two fur babies that are our cats and our
kids, in a way. I do believe pets become family — you love them just
as much.”
Misty came into Smitzniuk’s life approximately 12 years ago, she
said, when her and her husband took Misty in from a family member.
They adopted Stormy a few years later after his mother, a farm
cat, abandoned him when he was only three weeks old.
“I used to have to mix him formula, so he was like a little baby and
he still is,” Smitzniuk said. “He’ll sit in my lap and he’s a good cat. He’ll
follow me around the house … I can still wrap him up in a blanket and
he’ll just fall asleep.”
Like any pet mom, Smitzniuk likes to make sure her cats are
living their best life, and recent trends in pet care have made that
a little easier.
Smitzniuk has a nanny camera set up beside the cat’s automatic
feeders, she said, so when they go out of town they have peace of
mind in knowing their cats are doing okay while they’re gone.
The feeders also have Smitzniuk’s voice programmed into them
Pampering pets with the cats seem to find comfort in as well.
so they can call the cats for dinner by name, Smitzniuk said, which
Smitzniuk even has a pet stroller she bought from PetSmart,
which allows her to take Stormy on summer walks.
“(Stormy) likes to kind of go anywhere with me … so I got this cat
PIZZAZZ stroller and he doesn’t mind it,” Smitzniuk said. “Once we get outside
he talks to me the whole way … there’s a little flap at the back of the
stroller so he’ll face front and then turn around a give a little, ‘meow’,
so I’ll assure him I’m right there and he’ll turn back around and face
the front again.”
For Alyssa Fletcher, owner of Grassroots Grooming in Brandon,
pet owners that go the extra mile for their best friends — as she likes
to refer to her pets — is nothing new.
Business has been steady since Grassroots Grooming opened
their doors, Fletcher said, with programs like their deshedding
program growing more and more popular among dog owners and
creative grooming requests on the rise.

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