You have been awfully busy this month. Did you know that? The community cats keep us hopping every month, but this July…well, let’s just say “you are amazingly awesome” is a colossal understatement. Your monthly donation has been doing hard, healing work for some blessed, blissful cats.
When we first met him, skinny stray Riley was no blissful boy. You may have seen Riley on our homepage, where he’s currently the face of the Linda Fund Matching Challenge. When we first met him, Riley had been smashed nearly to smithereens by a car. His immediate injuries included a skull fracture, dislocated hip, lung contusions and broken femur. This poor grey-and-white cat was so contorted, and in so much agony, we couldn’t even determine his gender — ergo, the gender-neutral name “Riley.”
But maybe the name was also a defiant act of hope that this cat could someday, miraculously live the “life of Riley.”
I confess we weren’t given much reason to hope for that on that first night. Jonathan, Tabby’s Place’s Founder and Executive Director, prepared us all that this might be a very sad, very short story. The odds were painfully high that Riley wouldn’t even last the night — and, if he did, his brain might be swollen too much for him to survive the necessary surgeries to put him back together again.
But where reasonable hope trailed off, prayer and determination took over. Somehow, Riley survived — one night, then two, becoming stable enough for multiple procedures to gently repair his (many) broken pieces. When the stray silvery boy came “home” to Tabby’s Place, he was in so much pain from his surgeries that the kindest thing we could do would be to treat him with massive amounts of medication, and to let him sleep. And so we did.
There was no way to know, at this point, what Riley would be like when we awoke. He was unneutered (he’d finally been stable enough to let us take a peek), so for all we knew, he’d never had any interaction with humans before this nightmare. Perhaps he was a “true feral.” Perhaps he would hate us and hiss at us and rip us to ribbons as soon as he was strong again.
Perhaps. But it didn’t matter: we loved him already, and we were committed to his healing, no matter the cost or the time.
When Riley finally awoke from his long slumber, we were greeted with a grand surprise. After everything, this little cat craved love — and he was a superstar at giving love right back. Exuberantly affectionate, with a purr to rock the house, Riley was a mush-mouse like no other.
As of this update, Riley has made an almost complete recovery, and he’s just been able to move from our in-house hospital to the Special Needs Suite. It’s been an improbable journey for a shattered feral cat — but you’ve been there with Riley every step of the way through your generosity.
Dear sponsors, it’s only because of you that Tabby’s Place can take such extraordinary measures for free-roaming cats. While most people would see “just another stray,” you see a life worth saving. For cats like Riley, your love makes all the difference.
Thank you from the depths of my heart!