Over time this career that we have chosen can start to wear you down. Too often it seems we see the ugly side of animal abuse or people who do not care for their pets. However every once in a while a truly amazing person crosses our paths and our job becomes the best job on the planet. This story starts with horrid abuse and has a wonderful ending because of one of those wonderful people.
Last week a lady who used to be one of our clients, and who just moved back to the area, was driving down the 401 near highway #62 when she spotted something moving near the median. Unlike many people she didn’t keep driving, she immediately pulled over to see what it was. It turned out to be a little tiny grey 10 week old kitten. From the injuries the kitten had sustained it was fairly obvious that some “person with issues” (can’t think of any other polite way to phrase it) had thrown this little kitten from a moving car while they were driving along the highway.
Our client picked up the kitten and brought him in to see Dr. Sage just before closing on Wednesday evening. His tiny little back leg was broken and stripped of its skin (we call this a “degloving injury”). Amazingly he had no further internal injuries (kittens are remarkably tough little guys) or other major damage. The best news of all… this wonderful lady wanted us to repair the little fella because she wanted to give him a loving home!
We made the little fella comfortable overnight (iv fluids and lots of pain medications) and the next morning we amputated his little leg as there was no way to save it. Surprisingly to most people he will do extremely well after this. I like to remind people that we only have 2 legs and we get along fine, they have four. Now he has three which still puts him one up on us. However he really doesn’t like his little cone…
Kode (Aakode’ewin, which means “Brave” in Ojibwe) has indeed been doing extremely well. He is in his new home with a wonderful owner and will be having his stitches removed this Friday. I would like to personally thank this wonderful human being from myself and every single one of my staff. You have done a wonderful thing not only for Kode, but for us as well. I am fairly sure that during the few days that he spent with us his three remaining legs never touched the floor… he seemed to get carried around constantly in the arms of one of our staff.
As a practice we are blessed with a fairly large percentage of clients who, like this lady, manage to lift our days on a regular basis. We are all very grateful to those people although I am sure that we do not tell them often enough. But people like you who are prepared to do so much for a little tiny abandoned and abused kitten are rare indeed… Thank you very much.
Dr. Mike Steen
Hillcrest Animal Hospital
October, 2014
