After spending 11 years on the street trying to survive and find food, this cat named Teddy was brought to the shelter. There it turned out that the cat was very ill and could be euthanized, but a miracle did happen.
“Teddy was a cat who went through one of the longest rehabs I’ve ever seen at a shelter. It took him eight months to go from a scared and sick cat to an affectionate pet.”
Eight months ago, Lisa and Dan White , the founders of Ivy’s Memorial Rescue, a small private cat shelter in Windsor, Nova Scotia, learned of a stray cat fed by locals. It was reported that the cat is at least 11 years old and spent all of them outside, including freezing winters.
When the cat began to feel really bad, the Whites decided to take him to their shelter. Veterinary examination revealed that the cat had a very advanced case of Plasmacytic pododermatitis.
This is a rare disease of the cat’s paw pads. They swell, and then appear and it hurts the cat to walk. In addition, a secondary bacterial infection develops in the animal’s body. The cat’s chances of survival were minimal, but a blood test showed that his body was trying to fight off the infection, and Lisa decided to take Teddy home and give him a course of medication.
Lisa also wanted the cat, exhausted by the troubles of a stray life, to at least spend these days in comfort, with good food and care. It was believed that the infection would soon completely bring him down and then it would be better to put the cat to sleep so that he would not suffer.
But the very first days in the house of Lisa and Dan showed that the cat is not yet ready to give up. He resisted attempts to give him medicine with surprising stamina and hated it when people tried to touch him. The medicine had to be given 3 times a day and each occasion was a small boxing match.
Only a week later the cat got used to people and weakened the resistance, the medicines also began to work and he felt better. Moreover, he began to allow people to touch him and even stroke his head.
When Teddy was brought back from Lisa’s house to the vet, the vet was surprised by how he was feeling. It seemed that the cat was not going to die from his sores at all.
“Now I begin to understand how Teddy managed to survive on the streets for 11 years. The average life expectancy of a stray cat on the streets of a large city is no more than 4 years, and then death from cars or from various diseases. Teddy probably used up all his 9 lives.”
A month later, Teddy gained an additional 1.3 kg of weight and began to slowly come out of his “shell”. He stopped sitting huddled in a corner, and began to walk around the room of his temporary dwelling, and then he saw a cat bed and fell in love with lying on it.
Then, after a while, Teddy began to enjoy communicating with a person. Very slowly, but he moved forward in socialization. He began to expose his head and sides for people to pet him. During the years of life on the street, hardly anyone stroked Teddy, and for him it was a completely new sensation.
“We deliberately left the door open in the room where Teddy lived so that he would leave the room and look around other places, but for him all this was very stressful and we did it infrequently so that he would get used to it gradually. Somewhere in the month of April we began to leave the door open more often and Teddy finally began to leave his room and carefully walk in other parts of the house.
Teddy has come a very long way to become a house cat and move away from a stressful state. Now he could lie relaxed anywhere and enjoy the presence of people and the touch of their hands. Teddy also ate and is now a very well-fed cat.
And then Teddy found the couple’s bed and fell in love with lying next to Lisa’s husband, Dan. Now it is his favorite place in the house.
“Teddy stole my husband and my place on the bed,” Lisa laughs.
Now Teddy continues to live in the Whites’ house and still receives medicines, but the crisis has long passed.
