Last time we saw Charlie, he was taking a nap under a car as usual. He looked rather well and relaxed. He looked as though he had gained some weight too. We then lost track of Charlie for a few days. The weather got colder and we thought he had moved to a warmer place, but as days went by we started to fear the worst.
Paul kept on refilling Charlie’s feeding station every day and looking for him everywhere but he was nowhere to be found.
Late Saturday afternoon, Paul spotted Charlie under a car parked right across from the Sanctuary’s front door. Charlie looked extremely weak and deteriorated.
There was some dried blood on his mouth and front legs. We knew it was a “now or never” moment. We brought the carrier, slowly approached him from a side and before he knew it Paul bravely managed to grab him and pull him from under the car.
Charlie tried to get loose, but Paul held him real tight and pushed him into the carrier in a split second. After 4 months chasing after him, Charlie was finally safe. He spent the night in a warm room of the Sanctuary where he had everything he needed to hopefully start a new life. But sadly, it wasn’t his fate.
On Sunday, we rushed him to the emergency vet as soon as we could and about one hour later, he was finally admitted. After an extensive physical examination, the diagnosis was not favourable. Charlie had great abdominal pain and his kidneys were enlarged, almost double their normal size. X-rays and ultrasound performed revealed his kidneys were full of huge cysts.
He was diagnosed Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) which is a is an inherited condition, meaning these cysts must have been in Charlie’s kidneys from birth and as time went by, they grew and disrupted kidney function resulting in fatal kidney failure.
Although Charlie was a young cat, abandonment and the challenging life he had on the streets didn’t help his condition. There was nothing else we could do for our sweet Charlie but to help him cross the Rainbow Bridge with all the love and dignity he was denied in life. We were by his side, gently stroking his head as he took his last breath.
Charlie will be cremated and his ashes will be kept in our Sanctuary next to Tommy, Minnie and Jasmine’s. Our dreams and hopes of changing Charlie’s life were shattered and now our hearts are broken in a way words fail to describe.
Today, we wish to send out big thank you to all of you who have been sending your love and prayers, everyone who made a donation towards his vet care.
Last but not least, we want to thank all his sponsors, for their trust and support, for believing we could eventually pull him off the streets, and for helping us to take care of him and feed him while he was still out there. In life, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose; this is our time to lose again and with our broken hearts, we have to accept it.