EASEL Animal Rescue: Senior Pet Adoption Assistance Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

This grant helped us to find a home for a specific senior pet with a medical condition. It also allowed us to educate our community about the benefits of providing veterinary care to cats in order to prevent a simple, treatable condition from escalating into a problem.

How many pets did this grant help?

One

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

When Caramel Apple was found wandering the streets of a large city in November 2021, this beautiful older tuxedo cat was very sick. Taken to an overcrowded, high-volume shelter, her outlook was not good.

Her luck began to change when she was transferred to EASEL through our shelter-outreach program. It turns out she was diagnosed with a significant upper-respiratory infection. The URI suppressed her appetite, and when she did eat, she frequently vomited.

After three weeks of treatment, she rebounded well, but was down to 7 lbs. and still had an underlying issue. Our vets diagnosed hyperthyroidism and put her on medication.

But there’s plenty of good news. Caramel Apple has responded well to medication. While she doesn’t like her tablets (who does?), she readily takes them crushed and wrapped in pill pockets. Having regained her appetite, Caramel Apple added more than 2.5 lbs. since she arrived at EASEL.

The next step for Caramel Apple was convincing an adopter to take on an older cat with a pre-existing medical condition. In the meanwhile, this kitty got to chill out in a foster home instead of waiting in a cage at our shelter.

Her big break came in the form of a Senior Pet Adoption Grant from the Petfinder Foundation. With this funding in hand and a wonderful social-media campaign, Caramel Apple found her furever home.