Edit 10.04.2014
Max – finally walking on all 4!Edit 25.08
Unfortunately, Shelly has still not been operated. During her stay at the clinic she encountered a virus and managed to get a diarrhoea that postponed any surgery. The poor girl is very small in size and very light in weight and the doctors decided to wait as long as necessary for her to be in optimal condition, as the recovery is gowing slower than anticipated.
Edit 11.08
Kind boy Max has been operated sucessufully by d-r vassilev and his surgery was a most suffisticated and contemporary method that should leave him with no worries or problems! We hope to soon be able to show you Max running as the casual white angel he is!
Little Shelly is still at the CVC where cell by cell and with the great care of the doctors she is piling up the missing connective tissue she needs for a scuccessfull skin transplant.
P.S. Please excuse our short silence, illness doesn’t ask if it’s a working day, but we will make sure to compensate by sharing the joyful news of the last few days quickly.
Dear friends, two kind hearts need your urgent help – pain has come to stay with them and doesn’t want to let them go. Pain probably has forgotten that you are all miracle-makers, but perhaps she is too busy to think about it while she is torturing these kind little souls. Can we show her the door? Can we set the little angels free?
Shelly
Shelly is 4 months old, she is probably a mix between a Scottish fold and a Pesian cat. She has probably been sold quite expensively and her “owners” must have been very proud and happy with her. That is of course, until they locked her up in their apartment for a month, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
We learnt about Shelly through Angel. This is what he wrote to us:
“Our neighbors abandoned 2 kitties in their apartment, they haven’t come home for a month now. They live on the second floor.
A week ago my girlfriend and I returned from a holiday and were told that one of the kitties took a leap of faith (probably forced by hunger and thirst) and jumped down from a window. It was outside the building, no one had helped it, so the little one just sat there all day. We immediately took it. We fed him and checked him and when we realized everything was OK with the cat, we decided to keep it as a family member.
2 days ago something much worse happened. I was out on my balcony when the workers cutting the grass outside called me (they know I love cats). The second kitty was found in the tall grass.
I got down straight away and was shocked by the sight of it – the kitty was in a tragic state, its bottom clogged by hair and manure, full of fly larvae devouring it alive. I hadn’t cried this way since I was a little boy…”
From there – Angel took the baby to the Central Vet Clinic, and after that – he sought our help, worried that the kitten must be put down as he could not afford the bills.
But Shelly has no broken bones. Only a horrible fray that has left her with a very large skinless wound on her hind paw. The doctors were sadly impressed – they hadn’t seen such a walking anatomy lesson – you can see everything – muscles, ligaments, it’s all there. Well, if you would set aside all the puss and white worms.
We know not what kind of courage it takes and how painful the hunger must be for a 4-month old baby kitten to fly off her home balcony…
It is amazing, but the brave, the flying Shelly has no broken bones. But her wound is so bad that it cannot heal by itself. If we want the little angel to live she will need a skin-implantation surgery.
The surgery itself is not expensive (it costs approx. BGN 100), but to get through to it, Shelly needs even more time at the clinic until her connective tissue grows back – the new skin cannot be planted without it.
The vets at CVC have been giving Shelly antibiotics and different types of creams 4 times a day, she needs 24 hour care. This means she has to also “pay” for her stay at the clinic, which despite all the discounts we have, sums up to BGN 30 per day. She already has piled up a debt (BGN 140) and 7 more days at the clinic are still ahead of her (BGN 210).
That makes a disappointing total of BGN 450 for the life of a floppy-eared airborne kitten. It is very likely that she was paid for with a double, triple amount of money. But today having a breed doesn’t nothing for Shelly – pain doesn’t discriminate, it comes hard onto everyone, regardless of their color.
Max
“Patella luxation” is not a diagnosis we hear often. Most of all because it is typical for the pure-bred toy dogs. It is a very painful condition in which the knee cap is dislocated and causes great pain at every move. The disease is hereditary and we last stumbled upon it with Boby – the paralyzed Chihuahua.
And now… the worst of all possible surprises. Our little guy Max – one of three dumped babies that were hand-reared by Bistra a year ago – has the patella! This litter must suffer a horrid case of hipo-luck-osis, but it also seems that someone up there wants them to go on living. Such good and beautiful dogs – we have no clue how they’ve remained so long and un-asked for at the shelter.
Last week we noticed Max limping, in a few days the limp progressed drastically, we were quick to take him for X-rays and… damn!
As patella luxation is a condition that quickly evolves, d-r Vassilev of the Central vet clinic recommends immediate surgery, in the matter of days. Max faces two options – an expensive and a very expensive one. The vet says there is no time to deliberate as the condition worsens with every move.
Dear friends, Max really is one of the coolest dogs in the shelter, but his particular case of hipo-luckosis must be a very tough one. Do you think we could try and push one last time to provide him with a brighter future?
> For the standard surgery (joint resection) he would need BGN350. There is an 85-90% success rate.
> D-r Vassilev recommends an innovative less-invasive surgery which has a 99% success rate, but it is of course – more expensive, BGN 500.
We doubt that Max would be able to touch enough hearts even for the cheaper option – August is no time for charity. But there is a slight chance that he might have so many friends among the ARS people, so – here we are, presenting his case to you.
Max is the baby on the right. Please, help us save our friend, he is a great guy!
The equation of success
It is unfair that life and health are counted in money, but the world is what it is.
Shelly and Max are kind, innocent, friendly animals – everyone who has seen them for longer than 2 minutes can confirm this. But it doesn’t change the fact that both animals are homeless and unwanted and there is no one to care for them.
If you can lend a helping hand, please – do. Both little heroes deserve it.
Shelly needs a total of 450 BGN.
Max would be happy with 350 and twitter with joy if he got 500 BGN.
We know that the chance of success for this fundraising is close to 0 in the summer heat. But both have proven they defy the rules of logic: they abandon me -> I die. Maybe Faith still has a miracle stored for them up her sleeve?
To donate for these sweethearts, please click HERE – you can transfer by Bank, via PayPal and ePay.
> You can also leave a donation directly at the clinic register. Please, make sure you mention it is for the “Animal Rescue Sofia” bill.
If we do not succeed in raising the needed amounts, we will try to refund each donation.