All For Animals #76: Good Samaritan, Brooklyn Animal Hospital & Long Island Rescue rally to save injured cat from under BQE
What happens when a good Samaritan, a Brooklyn Veterinarian, a Long Island shelter and a love-struck receptionist get together? A New York City street cat, wins the rescue lottery.
It was January 4th when a Brooklyn resident got out of his car in a parking lot under the BQE in Sunset Park. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted something shivering in the cold, curled up in a pile of garbage. It was a cat. A skinny, dirty little thing with some blood on its chin.
But the cat lover, who works out of state, had a plane to catch in a week and knew, not only that he couldn’t keep her, but that she needed medical attention.
Knowing a storm was in the forecast and seeing the animal clearly wasn’t doing well on its own, he ran upstairs to his apartment, got a towel, came back down and scooped her up — no problem. No hissing, no struggling. Not the slightest meow in protest.
It turns out, the female kitty he named Violet, was the sweetest cat you’d ever want to meet. She even let him give her a bath (and what can do you know who’s OK with that?)
He called around, and got the attention of the Patricia H. Ladew Foundation, a cat shelter and sanctuary in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Executive Director Susan Whittred arranged for a medical exam at All Creatures Veterinary Hospital in Brooklyn, where Dr. Erica Morgan quickly realized that this wasn’t just some small cut on the mouth.
“Once we got her under sedation we could see she had a degloving injury, which is when the skin gets peeled back from the underlying tissue”, Dr. Morgan told AllForAnimalsTV. “My guess is she probably took some kind of trauma where she skidded her chin against the ground or fell from something, and then because she didn’t get medical care right away, it got very infected.”
In fact, Dr. Morgan, who notes that the cat had no collar and no microchip, says if she hadn’t been rescued when she was, she probably wouldn’t have survived.
The Ladew Foundation agreed to sponsor Violet’s treatment, which required examining and cleaning the wound, and surgery to stitch her up.
Through it all, Violet remained a model patient, wowing everyone at All Creatures, including Drew, the receptionist, who brought in partner Ella to meet the cat for possible adoption.
“I was like, uh oh, I just got myself another cat,” said Drew. “I literally knew from the first moment that she was coming home with us, because there was just something about her.”
Violet, who was renamed Jackie, is now in her forever home where Drew and Ella say she’s settling in nicely, and getting to know their resident cat. Stella wants to be friends, but has been respectful of Jackie’s space, allowing her to commandeer the bedroom as her personal turf.
Violet/Jackie’s care was made possible by the Ladew Foundation’s Emergency Fund, which was created several years ago, to help a cat they took in from Animal Care Centers of New York. Several months after Gus was adopted into a home, it was discovered that he had a liver shunt.
“He needed surgery,” Susan Whittred told AllForAnimalsTV, “and the emergency fund was developed because of that. We fund-raised… and thought, this might be a good thing to keep in case there’s another animal. And there’s always another animal.”
You can support the Ladew Foundation’s Emergency Fund, by clicking HERE.
