Thanks for reading and responding, Christine.;-)

I totally get that not everyone feels the same about rescuing animals. In this case, we had knowing rescued (brought from an animal shelter) a cat that was clearly shutdown and fearful. We knew ahead of time that there would be issues.

Taking her back to the shelter would most likely have resulted in her being euthanised, because she was not an outgoing animal and would not get adopted in a hurry. When we got her, she had been at the shelter for more than 6 months. A return to that shelter would have decided them that she was unadoptable.

We dedicated one room in the house to her, so not our entire home. (An approved animal rescue method of aclimatizing animals to a new environment is to keep them segregated for a short time). As to turning our lives upside down, our lives are pretty dull — we are old and not much happens in our lives — so not much turning upside down happened there. LOL

Although this update does not say, in fact we are making really good advances with her. Many of her issues seem to stem from fear and we are leaning heavily toward believing that she may have been physically abused by a previous owner.