KITTY

Rescued in July 2013, aged 2. Tested FeLV/FIV NEGATIVE.  

Feral cat mama. Strabismus. Developed mastitis after her 3 newborn kittens were mauled to death by a dog.

Rescue Story

Kitty used to live in a feral cat colony. At only 2 years old, she had already been pregnant a few times. First time we saw her, she had just given birth to a litter of 3.

After a couple of weeks, she was seen in distress next to her dead babies that seemed to have been mauled to death by a dog.

Kitty was terribly stressed and depressed by her loss, and she developed mastitis which is an infection of the mammary glands that occurs when the mother cat’s milk production is heavy, and milk is retained.

Mastitis is a veterinary emergency that requires immediate care, so we told our vets about her condition and asked them for advice.

We bought the antibiotics she needed in order to treat her while she was still living on the streets. We needed to make sure she’d take a pill a day for at least a whole week.

Although she was born feral, she was quite used to human contact. Kitty’s former caregiver (who had called us to ask for help) said she could probably give her a pill a day with some wet food.

Two weeks later, we could finally get Kitty into a carrier and bring her to the vet clinic.

She wasn’t too happy about it at first, she was fearful and not too friendly to the vets and while being handled, she almost managed to escape!

The vet said she’d be hard to tame her to be adopted for she was too “wild” and so for a split second we thought about TNR, they’d tip her ear, and we’d just release back to her colony.

We were extremely doubtful though. Kitty suffers from strabismus, so she was too vulnerable to be on the streets again.

When we looked at those mesmerizing blue eyes, we thought “What the heck! Let’s take our chances!”  We just couldn’t leave this baby on her own again and now we know we made the right decision.

At the vet’s clinic she was panicking with all the noises and barks around her, but once we got her to a safe and quiet environment, she started to soothe, and she never tried to escape, not once.

She did hide under the sofa bed for weeks, but she just needed some time to get used to her new life.

After a couple of months, Kitty was fully tamed, and she began to enjoy her brand-new life.

UPDATE JUNE 2018

In June 2018, all of the sudden, Kitty lost control of her body movements. She started swaying as she walked and then she began to drag her left hind leg. She kept falling off and could not jump, she began to look confused and disoriented. We had to rush her to the emergency vet. After an exhaustive physical examination and running a few tests (bloodwork and urine) the vet ruled out diabetes and heart disease, however, test results were not conclusive.

The underlying cause seemed to be neurological; the vet explained it could be a tumour in her brain or some abnormality in her spine, so a CT scan was required to get an accurate diagnosis but there were no CT scanners available back then at our local vet hospital.

After a few more tests and a therapy with corticosteroids that she responded well to, Kitty was diagnosed with Peripheral Nerve Injuries that caused life-long impairment of her left hind leg. Watch video >

UPDATE JULY 2024

Kitty just turned 13 and she is doing well. She’s been leading a very happy life at the Sanctuary for eleven years now.