Not a Moment too Soon. Saturday's Story.

One of my friends texted me Friday night. His wife found a cat wandering, thin, weak in the middle of the road. They are big animal lovers so it wasn't a surprise she ran to the cat's aide.

They hadn't seen the cat before, unlike many others who have come and gone through their yard this summer. They asked their friends and neighbors if anyone was missing their cat, meanwhile they were wondering what to do for her until they could find her family. I stepped in to offer help and guidance not realizing what that would mean until later.

©2014 Robin A.F. Olson. You can't really see it but she is VERY thin. You can easily feel all her bones, yet she still manages to purr for us.

I had planned to bring them some food and take photos of the kitty, but they told me she had a cough. I didn't want to chance it with her being sick so I offered to pay for the vet exam if they took her down the road to my vet, Dr. Larry's office. I didn't think it would be a big issue, but little did I know the kitty would be in far worse condition than I expected.

The kitty is a female. Betty, who runs the front desk at Dr. Larry's named her Saturday since we had to have a name for her records. We joked about what an odd choice it was for a name, but the laughs didn't last long. Once I got a good look at the cat my heart sank. She was thin, dirty. You could tell she felt cold from the effects of starving for who knows how long. My friends said she hadn't eaten over the night and only slept. She had a frailness about her I'd seen before in older cats that gave me pause.

©2014 Robin A.F. Olson. Sweet Saturday.

We ended up doing blood work and it surprised us that she was in better shape than we feared. Clearly she had issues from being seriously dehydrated but most of her functions were ok and she did not have Feline Leukemia or FIV, which is great news. Dr. Larry's partner, Dr. Mary, did the exam. She thought the kitty might be 10 years old or possibly even older. Her teeth are a mess but intact. She had a crust over her nostrils which we assumed to be an upper respiratory tract infection and along with it an odd snort/cough. These were things we could treat so I started to feel more hopeful as my friend and his wife bantered about talking about how they could not keep this cat, but yet she matched their dogs (my joke) and was sweet and was a girl in an otherwise all male household (the wife's reason to keep her).

Dr. Mary felt maybe she could go after getting SubQ fluids but ideally she should be on an IV. We talked about what was best for the sweet old kitty and I said we should do what's right, not what is the cheapest solution so we opted to transfer Saturday over to Newtown Veterinary Specialists (where I feel I should have my own room I've been there so often over the past few months).

We got Saturday settled at NVS and I got the estimate for her treatment. It was $1700.00 for about 36 hours of care. Dr. Mary had said we didn't need that much time so I pushed back and asked for a revised estimate. Here I was with a cat I knew nothing about, an older cat when I run a mostly kitten rescue. I was in over my head and I knew it wouldn't take much to drain our accounts for a cat that wasn't really ours. She might have a family out there looking for her. She might have been cruelly dumped. I guess it didn't really matter because Saturday needed help and my rescue was the only one who could provide the funds to make that happen if we used what I'd set aside to finally fix our foster room to help her.

This estimate of a bit over $1000. will be low. It was for only one day of care and Saturday is going to need 2 at least.

Saturday's been at NVS for a full day. She's still not eating. Her blood work is about the same, though in some areas she is a bit better. The red flag in her case is the fact that she won't eat. The Vets fear there is an underlying problem, like a cancer in her sinuses or cancer elsewhere. We'd have to do a very expensive CT scan to find it and then we have to look at how do we pay for these things and in the end does it make any difference for Saturday?

If any of you have read my stories before you know I am not one to give up on a cat. Right now we're giving her more time to be on the IV and I hope and pray she will eat on her own. They don't think she has an upper respiratory tract infection and that the crust we saw yesterday was not related to that, but something worse.

All I know is I want to continue to provide for this sweet girl. It's not right that she was cold, alone and starving when she should have a warm, love-filled life.

©2014 Robin A.F. Olson. In good hands.

Ways you can help Saturday

Call NVS and make a donation directly to Saturday's Fund at 203-270-8387. Please note: you will need a PayPal account to donate. They can’t take credit cards over the phone for security reasons.

We get more of your donation if you donate directly using our PayPal address: info@kittenassociates.org or if you go through our DONATE page on our web site.

You can mail a check to Kitten Associates, P.O. Box 354, Newtown, CT 06470-0354.

Just SHARE this with your friends who have kind hearts and love cats. That helps Saturday, too.

Your donation is Tax Deductible. K.A. is a non-profit rescue and our IRS EIN is 27-3 597692.

Any funds we don’t use for Saturday we will set aside for other kitties who need help.

Pray or send good thoughts to Saturday. She needs all of our love.

©2014 Robin A.F. Olson. She was so tired she fell asleep while we waited for her blood test results to come back.