Our organization’s full name is “Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary.” But this fall, it would be understandable if people started calling us “Tabby’s Place: a Prison Cat Sanctuary.”
It’s déjà vu all over again: just when we thought we knew all there was to know about felines and felons, along came another correctional facility…and another cat in desperate need.
As you know, all of Tabby’s Place’s Trap-Neuter-Return adventures started in a prison — the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (EMCFW), to be precise. Many, many, many black-and-white cats later, we have the vast, lovingly-managed feral cat colony at EMCFW largely stabilized.
Yet if there’s anything we’ve learned about TNR, it’s that keeping up with feral cats is a bit like Whac-a-Mole (well, except that we’d never in 870,000 years “whac” a cat — or a mole, for that matter; but you get the point). Just when we think we’ve spayed/neutered a colony to the point of stability, up pops a new litter of kittens, or a wily unneutered papa cat who laughs at our traps.
Or, in this case, a prison kitty who was never even on our radar.
Seventy miles south of EMCFW lies another correctional facility, the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI). This facility houses minimum-security male inmates with maximum-compassion hearts of gold. You won’t read that on their website — but you’ll see what I mean.
Last month, we learned that the inmates at FCI were extremely concerned about one of their feral cats. Just like the women at EMCFW, the men of FCI had taken compassion on the needy cats lurking the shadows of their world. Through food and patience, the men befriended the cats, and came to cherish them as their own. It was a situation that worked beautifully for everyone.
Until there was Mimi.
When one of “their” cats, a tiny tuxedo, began staggering and stumbling, the men feared for her life. They’d named the tiny cat Mimi, and they knew that even their love and feeding wouldn’t be enough for her. In a series of events I confess I don’t entirely understand, someone at FCI contacted someone in Michigan, who then contacted us with Mimi’s story.
Since we’re no strangers to TNR or prison (well, in the feline respect, anyway :-)), we felt compelled to help little Mimi. The men at FCI were overjoyed, and even made Mimi a “carrier” of their own design (pictured below left). I nearly got tears in my eyes when I saw that the men had written “MIMI” on the box, and drawn hearts around her name. This little cat was loved.
She was also in the right place. Our veterinarian, the stellar Dr. Collins, determined that mini Mimi almost surely has cerebellar hypoplasia, often called simply CH. This is actually very good news: CH is a nonfatal, nonprogressive neurological condition that develops when a kitten is exposed to the distemper virus while in the womb (typically due to his mama’s either getting distemper or being vaccinated against it while pregnant). The virus prevents the kitten’s cerebellum from fully developing. Since this is the part of the brain responsible for motor control, CH kitties wobble and stumble, but they enjoy lives as long, happy and healthy as any other cat. Mimi was going to be just fine.
At least, we thought she was.
Just two days after arriving at Tabby’s Place, the gentle little cat started showing signs of severe respiratory distress. An X-ray revealed something troubling in her chest cavity, so we rushed her to the emergency vet. The early fears were formidable: this could be the always-deadly FIP, or perhaps a massive tumor. It seemed profoundly wrong that a cat so loved, and so newly nestled in her safe haven, should leave us so soon.
But hold on a second; Mimi was about to get a pardon from on high.
In a strange mystery that currently has even the most brilliant specialists scratching their heads, Mimi does not have either a tumor or FIP. Nor does she have pneumonia, nor anything else that we can quite identify. As of this writing, we’re still awaiting some lab tests that might pin down Mimi’s mystery, but the bottom line is that she’s on antibiotics, she’s breathing beautifully, and she is, indeed, going to be okay.
Very okay. And, for all her days, very, very loved.
Although her story excludes the “R” from TNR, I will absolutely keep you posted on Mimi. I’ll also be thrilled to keep you posted on some very big feral news. We’ll be making a Great Big Official Announcement to the wider world next month (just in time for Tabby’s Place’s 10th anniversary and National Feral Cat Day). But, since you have been our feral kitties’ most faithful, generous allies, I’ll give you a sneak peek: we’re going to be officially expanding our mission to feral cats. If everyone is as amazing as you have been, we’ll be able to ramp up our work from helping just 1-2 feral kitties a week to up to 20.
But more on that in October.
Meantime, amazing fellow feral adorers, thank you for your boundless compassion and your fabulous generosity. Have a stellar September and know that you’ve changed the world for Mimi and more!