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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

"Four legs is just Greedy"

A moment away from food and a focus on our house mascot, the three legged wonder cat Ronnie-chan Murderball. An integral part of the dining experience at 312 Square Feet is the inevitable ceding of your lap to the Chan. She is the friendliest and most co-dependent cat that I have ever known. What would coming home be if she were not there waiting for me at the door and meowing to me all about her day, which must be very exciting for all of the racket that she makes. What would be sleeping if not for her furry forays over me to window sill or being wakened by her vigorous cleaning of my head.

So I want to bring focus to a woman who I met at Amber's picnic and whose dog suffered from cancer and is now a tripod too. Sonia and Lulu run a blog and sell merchandise to raise money to help out animals whose vet bills begin to exceed the means of their owners. Visit I heart Tripods to read all about the saga of Lulu's battle with cancer and purchase super cute Tee's and totes including this awesome cat Tee.


Ronnie lost her leg on the mean streets of Chicago. She had been a stray cat who picked the right home. In my apartment in Chicago we had a stoop that was gated and we lived on the second floor. One morning as my roommate was leaving for work with her bike, this gray streak ran past her and up our stairs to the landing outside our apartment door. Even then, Ronnie was a super friendly fur ball. Purring and jumping up to be pet, while holding up her front right paw. We noticed right away that she was seriously injured, but we couldn't let her into our apartment because we already had two other cats and couldn't risk their health.

We both called in sick from work and put the then nameless kitty into a carrier and hauled her off to the first vet that would take us. Lucky for us we took her to Higgins Animal Clinic on Belmont. They x-rayed her and bandaged up her foot and told us that she was indeed a girl, very underweight but thankfully with not feline leukemia or other contagious diseases. The bad news was that we had to get the leg amputated as soon as possible. It was gangrenous and was threatening Ronnie's life.

But we just couldn't afford the surgery. We took Ronnie home with the bandaged foot and tried to figure out what we could do. We had about a week to come up with the $1300 that it was going to cost. At the time, I was barely making $10K and my roommate was working at Planned Parenthood, not glamorous or high paying positions. We tried to apply for aid, but we didn't qualify. I guess you have to be broker than living under the poverty line to get help for your animals.

Just in time! The vet at Higgins called us and told us that because we couldn't get all that together that they had a new vet coming in who needed to practice surgery. They would do the surgery after hours and at cost for us. Ronnie was going to be saved!

She had her paw removed and in the course of the surgery they found that she was pregnant with a small litter! They were miss carried because of all of the stress on her poor body, but we had to have the surgery to save her. She was so small and this cat slept and slept and slept. But she is the best cat! I am so lucky to have her.

So go buy a T-Shirt and help out other tripods!

1 comment:

DRAKE said...

I love three-legged animals as well and Ronnie is my favorite tripod in NYC! A great cause and thanks for the link to a place worthy of any extra change we may have.