Fan Mail Letters
Feral Kitties
Animalkind, Inc

From: Rachael Gordon
 
Apr 24, 2012
 
Subject: feral kitties

All of the kitties are doing fantastically and absolutely loving their lives.
 
All of the females we adopted from you are totally in love with Pumpkin(the male kitty you brought us). They all snuggle up to him in big piles of hay. We are always overjoyed to see this since he is disabled with the missing foot he came to us with. This just seems to make him even more popular.
 
They have all also gotten a lot tamer. We do not disturb them by trying to pet them, but Nina and Dulli in particular are very comfortable with us getting within 5 feet of them. Also, Dulli (the blind cat) loves the hay loft. She gets around with no problems and is one of the most adventurous of the bunch. Hanna is her favorite play mate.
 
Wheezy, we had a lot of trouble with, but she is now doing well. We noticed days after her arrival that she was showing signs of an ear infection. It took us nearly a month to capture her and were very concerned about her condition at that time. She had been walking with a head tilt and upon close examination we noted she was very thin. We rushed her to our feral cat vet who was fantastic with her.
 
She ended up being diagnosed with an ear-and-sinus infection that out vet said had likely been developing for nearly two years and worsened from the stress of traveling from your facility to our house. She also was born with a genetic condition that causes her to have an allergy to her own saliva. This caused a massive infection in her mouth with accounted for her weight loss. Also she had a herpes virus in her right eye that perforated her cornea. According to our vet, all of these conditions were linked to the prolonged sinus infection. She underwent a number of surgeries to clear her ears and sinuses and remove her teeth.
After this and antibiotics, she bounced back beautifully.
 
We then brought her to to Tufts veterinary school for surgery to repair her eye. They saved her eye and she made a full recovery. All of the vets involved with saving her life were amazed by how well she did. All of her issues could not have been detected while she lived at your facility and thus could not have been prevented. The important thing is that she is now a healthy and gorgeous cat.
 
After her numerous surgeries she moved into the house to become a house cat during her extensive recovery and then decided never to move out. So now she lives very happily with her boyfriend Shadow (a cat we got off the streets years ago). She went from being 4 pounds (when she was dying) to a healthy 11 pounds and is getting very tame. She is very happy living in the house and we love having her around.
 
We truly appreciate all your organization does for these otherwise homeless cats. None of the cats we got from you, especially Wheezy (her new name is Breezy because after her sinus infection was cleared up she no longer wheezes) would have been able to lead normal lives in the wild.
 
Endless thanks!
 
Rachael Gordon