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- This picture was taken two weeks ago. If you are interested and would like more recent pics, let me know.
Cherry is a lovely little calico/torti with white. She is mostly black with a mottled patch over one eye, orange streaks on her white neck, and white paws with toes that alternate pink and black. As she gets older, I am seeing more orange in the black fur on her back as well. She has the sweetest disposition of any cat that I have ever met. I think that she knows that she would not have survived in the wild and is very grateful for the loving care that she has received.
When we found Cherry and her sister, they were three weeks old. We took them in because mom was feral and very young and thin. We noticed right away that Cherry’s left leg was completely limp, and the toes on her right leg curl when the leg is bent, as though the tendon is too short. As she grew, she learned to get around on her front legs, dragging the back ones out straight behind her. Our vet thinks that she may have had an encounter with a dog that left her injured, but she couldn’t rule out some sort of birth defect.
She has developed some use of her back legs, the right one more than the left. She now walks on her front legs while pushing with her back knees. She can even go up and down our carpeted stairs! We are hoping that with exercise and massage her mobility will develop further, but we don’t know to what degree.
As her sister learned to use the litter box we realized that Cherry didn’t seem to have control over her bowels and bladder. She tends to just go wherever she is. She can move her tail and her anus “puckers” when touched, so there is some control there. Again, we’re hoping that will develop with time. One of the ladies in the forums here suggested that she wasn’t emptying her bladder purposely, but that it was leaking because it was full. I brought Cherry back to the vet yesterday and she showed me how to express Cherry’s bladder to empty it. When I picked her up last night to express her though, she had already emptied her bladder. So again, we’re hoping for improvement with time.
We are in Southern Maryland, but willing to travel a reasonable distance to put Cherry in the right home. We will be in Southern Pennsylvania on the weekend of the 16th of June and could drop her off/meet her new family near there. I will require references from her adopting family, including one from their family vet indicating that they are capable of caring for a cat with Cherry’s limitations. Cherry is FeLV/FIV negative, has been de-wormed, and has had her first FVRCP vaccination. I have this message set to notify me when a reply is posted, so reply here and I will closely monitor my email for responses. Thanks for reading.
