Tulip has faced countless challenges in her short life, but the 10-month-old kitten still greets each day with a smile.

Found on the streets of Ontario, Canada, she was taken in by a local rescue at about 2 weeks old. Tulip was suffering from an eye infection, but still smiled for the camera when the rescue snapped a shot of her for its website. Little did the kitten know, that picture would be the one to find her a forever family.

When Tulip’s grin suddenly appeared on their computer screen, Jenn and Chris had been looking for a friend for their cat Pinecone for months. The Dodo quoted Jenn as saying, “Her grin in her small commercial image attracted us in right away.”

The couple applied for the kitten without having seen it before, and their application was accepted. They were astonished to see the cat still grinning even in the shelter when they went to see her. They clicked right away. When we first met her, Jenn said, “we fell head over heels for both her appearance and her demeanor.

When they brought Tulip home, the little cat continued to show off her sweet grin.

“At first we assumed that it was just a one-off in her advertisement, but once we got her home and we began taking countless pictures of her, we realized that it was a permanent thing,” Jenn added. “Her smile is always there and it never gets old.”

Even through some medical issues, the tuxedo cat smirked to let her parents know that everything would be OK.

“The realistic part of me likes to think that her coloring has a lot to do with her constant smile,” Jenn said. “Then another part of me likes to think that she’s always smiling because she knows that at 10 months old she’s already overcome so much.”

Now that Tulip is healthy, she loves to play fetch and carry her toys around, hang out by the fish tank and annoy her older brother — with whom she’s inseparable.

“She’s a constant reminder that things always turn around and get better, no matter how difficult they seem in the moment,” Jenn added. “It’s hard to picture our lives without her smile. She has added so much joy to our hearts and our home.”

“She truly is a tulip,” she added, “always blooms again — and I think she knows that about herself.”