Paws Animal Shelter: Emergency Medical Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
This grant was crucial in ensuring that Laney received the medical care she desperately needed.
Laney would not have been able to walk without extreme pain without this surgery. She went from lying around all the time because she was in pain to running around and playing like a normal kitten thanks to this grant and the surgery for which it paid.
How many pets did this grant help?
1
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Laney, a 7-week-old kitten, was found by a good Samaritan in the community who noticed she was unable to walk normally. She was brought to Paws Animal Shelter, where she was examined by the vet who sees our cats each week. X-rays were taken later that day at his clinic and he diagnosed her as having hip subluxation.
Dr. Cole recommended a femoral head ostectomy for Laney. However, she had to wait several weeks until she was 4 months old and big enough to have this surgery. It was painful for Laney to walk, so she went into foster care right away so she could be carefully monitored and encouraged to eat. Because she was in pain when she walked, she spent most of her time lying around, preferably on one of her foster family member’s laps! They encouraged her to play, and she did enjoy batting at ribbons.
Paws Animal Shelter received an Emergency Medical Grant from the Petfinder Foundation to cover the required surgery for Laney. To minimize disruption and stress for Laney, her foster family agreed to continue fostering her after her surgery. She did very well with this family, which is one of our regular foster families. They take excellent care of everyone they foster.
Laney’s surgery went well, and she was a very cooperative patient, performing all of the required therapy. She stayed with her foster family until she was fully recovered from the surgery and no longer required therapy.
When Laney returned to the shelter, we put her in with kittens who were younger than she was because she was so petite, so they were closer in size to her. We didn’t want kittens who were much larger inadvertently hurting her during normal kitten playing and wrestling.
She was definitely confused in finding herself at the shelter, as she had been with her foster family for so many months. She was around the adult cats at her foster home and got along well with them, so she had no trouble getting along with the other kittens in her room. It took her a little while to get used to everyone at the shelter, but she has now fully adjusted and is a very sweet, loving kitten.
She is definitely a lap cat, undoubtedly because she spent so much time on her foster family members’ laps. The longer she spends at the shelter and the more she recovers the full use of her leg, the more playful she has become. I was at the shelter yesterday and spent quite a bit of time playing with her. She chased one of the fishing-pole toys all over her room. Later, she climbed up on the bench with me and started playing with my hair! It was really sweet.
Though Laney had a rough start in life, it has totally turned around. Her injuries have been fixed thanks to the generous support of the Petfinder Foundation, and she is now well cared-for at Paws Animal Shelter, where she will stay until we find a loving forever home for her.
She is such a sweet, gentle soul that I am confident we will find a family for her this winter. Thank you for the vital role you have played in Laney’s rescue. You can see Laney on Petfinder here.
