Your daily OM….

Born to Suffer

In a hidden drain outside a school in the Macpherson estate, there lived a family of cats – a mom and a few kittens.  Happy and peaceful, the caregiver comes by daily to give them food.  However, the errant caregiver doesn’t feed responsibly and tends to leave mountain heaps of food to rot, thus attracting flies, roaches and rats.  This irresponsible feeding behaviour has attracted the attention of the school warden who does not like the sight of a single feline within or around his school compound.  Pest control was called in to round up the cats and kittens for culling.  Little Neem’s family was taken away.  1 of her sibling ran off across the busy road and disappeared out of sight.  Neem hid in the drain and watched in terror as her mom and other siblings were dragged away by Pest Control.  The smiling school warden was satisfied with his cruel act and stomped with pride back to his office.

The caregiver later found Neem hiding in the small drain and it was raining heavily so she pushed Neem to Omcat shelter.  Shelter is full to the brim with rescued cats and dogs so we had no choice but to mix a terrified Neem with a bunch of kittens.  Neem had tough luck at adoption.  Because of the traumatic ordeal, she turned into a recluse.  She’s neither friendly nor sociable to strangers, thus putting adopters off.  She would meow timidly only to her fosterers.  She would get daily kisses and pats from her fosterers in hope of socializing her more so that she could be potentially rehomed.

Then came the 2nd phase of suffering – asphyxiation pneumonia with blood and pus building up outside the lungs, causing breathing difficulty.  Dip in the immune system and drastic dropping of red blood count made her suseptible to viral attacks.  Her health very quickly deteriorated to a critical state, requiring ICU treatment to draw out the lung build up so that she can breathe, as well as IV fluids with antibiotics to fight secondary infection.  But the frail kitten body couldn’t take it and faded off overnight.

The saddest part of her journey was her prolonged suffering from when her family was taken away, until her battle with life.  She was hanging on and every day we visited her at the vet, she looked with hopeful eyes that she could come back to the foster home.  Alas, she didn’t make it back.  Neem passed away in the wee hours of the morning on 19.12.11.

Neem’s vet bill was $1109 because of the ICU treatment, IV drips and repeated blood tests and xrays.  If you would like to help defray the cost, please email to crystal.chakra@gmail.com  These costs are now born by the fosterers because the irresponsible caregiver would not contribute a single penny.  All volunteers have cut off financial assistance and cat food sponsorship to her because she would not feed responsibly.  Her errant feeding behaviour is actually jeopardizing all the other cats in the estate and Cat Welfare mediators are burnt out dealing with complaints arising from her irresponsible feeding.  If you are able to contribute, please help so that rescue work can continue for the other sick and injured animals still under foster care.

With metta.

Neem (passed away 19.12.11)