03/14/2026
This is Remi. Barely over a year old, and had already spent over 1/3 of his life in misery. He was hit by a car and was left to suffer with a mangled tail and a hind leg he couldn't move. When I saw him at a colony we found, my heart broke. He was trying to get up an incline covered in snow and ice, the feeder said "oh he's a trooper, he gets around just fine". Set up a plan to trap him and get him medical attention. By the time he was caught, his tail was gone. Get him to my vet and the smell of rotting flesh coming off of him was overwhelming. She sedated him, cleaned him up, and told me he needed the rest of his tail and his hind leg amputated. She gave him a convenia shot and sent us home with clavamox, meds for the diarrhea, and gabapentin. . I reached out to rescues to try to get him what he needed, he spent a week laying in his own p**s and diarrhea, it just oozed out of him, while waiting for answers back. Brought him back to my vet, she sedated him and cleaned him up again and gave him another exam and and another convenia shot. She said his leg could not even be moved, like it was frozen in place. I finally hear back from 2 rescues who were willing to help, but in the end they declined because he was feral. I tried for another 2 weeks to get him to where he could be handled for bandage changes. He did improve for a few days, but then the diarrhea got worse, and he started getting mean. I started seeing more blood and what looked like pieces of his tail on the pads in the kennel, and he started lunging at me when I went in. I made the decision to let him go and give him peace. I just found out when I stopped to make a payment, that the vet never gave him that 2nd antibiotic shot. This poor cat was let down way too many times. If his feeder had just helped him from the start, whether it was a trip to the vet for treatment, or even if it was a trip to let him cross, either one would have saved him a lot of pain and suffering. Can you even imagine the hell he was living to chew off his own tail?? The feeder had no intentions on getting him any kind of help just because he managed to get around. It never even occurred to him that the cat did it because he had no choice, it was survival. Never even gave a 2nd thought as to how much pain the cat was in. He never even gave him a name. There are many cats there, we saved two 10 week old kittens and an older kitten from freezing to death in one of the coldest winters we've had in over a decade. We got him shelters filled with warm insulation and straw for the colony, and have tnr'd a bunch of the cats. 5 females were pregnant. Still one female to get, who is now pregnant and is allegedly the mother of all the cats there. I laid Remi to rest on February 25th and not a single day goes by that I dont feel the heartbreak of the short miserable life he lived through, and the loss of the life he deserved. At least he felt love, a constantly full belly, warmth and a comfy bed, and was safe
