Corey spent all of the year 2003 and the first part of 2004 living in a shed on the property of a kind-hearted elderly woman.The woman was crippled by arthritis and had little money, but she did the best she could to care for Corey.

But one day she looked outside to see Corey sitting in the middle of the street.He appeared to be blind and was uncertain of where he was.The woman called Tabby’s Place, hoping desperately that we would accept him.While we hear “desperate” stories all of the time, something told us that this was a cat that really needed what Tabby’s Place could offer.So, we accepted Corey.

As soon as we saw hime, we knew we had made the correct decision.Corey was emaciated, he had a badly abscessed toenail, his eyes looked … well, “horrible” is the only word that comes to mind.In addition, his ears were in terrible shape from multiple ear mite infestations and he had a heart murmur.He appeared to be largely blind and deaf.Despite all of this, Corey was one of the sweetest cats we had the honor of knowing.

Because of his age and condition, we drew blood and sent it our for extensive anaylsis.The results were normal, but Corey did poorly over the next few days. He had little appetite and had foul-smelling, bloody diarrhea.We rushed him to the emergency vet, where he spent several days on IV fluids and antibiotics and undergoing evaluations, including an ultrasound and several x-rays.They could find nothing obviously wrong, outside of an unidentified GI abnormality. But he continued to detriorate.We feared we would lose him.But, miraculously, Corey started to improve and they were able to stabilize him.we brought him home and started him on prednisone, in hopes of improving his GI problems (he was too fragile to undego any invasive diagnostic procedures).We didn’t want to keep him in a cage, so we placed him in our Employee-Volunteer Lounge, where he would be comfortable and receive lots of attention, which he loved.

Much to our delight, Corey slowly began to improve.He regained his appetite and his diarrhea disappeared.After a few weeks, we felt he was strong enough to withstand a car trip, so we took him to a veterinary opthalmalogist to see if anything could be done for his eyes.The opthalmalogist told us that he believes that Corey has a small amount of vision left in one eye, but that nothing could be done to improve his overall vision.The best we could do is help him retain what little vision he does have.

So, we are going to send out some bloodwork, testing for some uncommon parasites and other diseases that could cause his eye problems.In addition, we are going to schedule him for an ultrasound, to get a definitive diagnosis on his heart.

We initially thought Corey might only last a few days.But he has recovered so well that we are starting to become hopeful that we can keep this dear boy with us for longer.Meanwhile, he will need extensive bloodwork, an ultrasound and frequent medical checkups.Please consider helping out poor Corey.