A woman noticed a little, squeaky noise emanating from some bushes in her backyard late one day. She searched about in the bushes for a while, then out came the smallest kitten ever, sick and in need of help.
Knowing she wouldn’t be able to help the very sick kitten on her own, the woman contacted Sandra Lee, a known kitten fosterer in Los Angeles. Even though Lee had just taken in another special care kitten, when she saw the tiny kitten’s picture, she immediately knew she couldn’t turn her away.
“She was found when she was approximately 6 to 8 weeks old, but it was a little difficult to accurately age her because she was so dehydrated and malnourished for her age,” Lee told The Dodo. “She had the characteristics of a 6- to 8-week kitten, yet weighed barely a pound, which is about the average weight for a 4-week-old kitten. Upon first sight, she was so dehydrated, every backbone in her spine was visible. She was covered in fleas, and we would shortly discover she was suffering from medical ailments.”
It was evident as soon as Lee brought the kitten, subsequently named Livvie, home with her that her road to recovery would not be simple. The poor animal could hardly move and appeared to be suffering from some sort of neurological condition. She was also unable to defecate on her own, despite attempting hundreds of times every day.
“To be honest, I wasn’t sure she’d make it the first two nights,” Lee said. “All I wanted to do was provide her a warm home and a secure area.” “I honestly would be frightened to check on her for the first week since she was so sickly.”
Lee rushed Livvie to the veterinarian as quickly as she could, but everyone there was perplexed by her condition. Her failure to use the restroom was producing the worst line they’d ever seen, and it was most likely due to her existence on the streets, where she didn’t have access to sufficient food or drink.
They found that the toxins from the waste buildup were most likely to blame for her neurological problems, but they couldn’t say how long the effects would continue once she recovered.
For the first four weeks in her foster home, Livvie spent most of her time at the vet. Her issues were so severe, no one was sure if she’d ever be able to recover. Her foster mom had to carefully monitor her medications, and also her food and water intake.
She was so severely dehydrated that her tiny meow made her sound more like a goat than a cat. It seemed that Livvie’s road to recovery had no end in sight — but finally, after four months, little Livvie was completely healed.
Livvie’s personality began to peek through once she was better, and she changed into the goofiest, kindest cat. Her foster mother started looking for a permanent home for her, and she immediately found the appropriate woman to adopt her. She wished her well and sent her off to her new home, but she soon discovered that Livvie had her own ideas about where her everlasting home should be.
Livvie struggled to acclimate to her new surroundings and spent the most of her time hiding, only emerging to feed or play when she was fully alone. Livvie’s new mother tried everything she could think of to encourage her to warm up, including lying on the floor for hours on end and chatting calmly to her, but nothing worked.
Lee eventually decided to go over there one day to see if she could help, and as soon as Livvie saw her, she was back to her old self, meowing like crazy and ecstatic to see her.
“I laid on the floor and just started to talk to her,” Lee said. “Livvie immediately let out a little meow and started wiggling her way out from under her hiding spot toward me. The nice lady said, ‘I think she wants to go home.’ Nearly 60 fosters in and out, and I knew we had ourselves our first official ‘foster fail.’”
“Although we had special bonds with all our fosters, I think we knew Livvie was special,” Lee said. “We were always against foster fails as we are at capacity with our own resident animals, but Livvie clearly had other plans. As soon as we got home and I let her out of her carrier, she was completely her normal self. She knew she was home.”
