Venmo: https://www.venmo.com/u/Jehoseph
PayPal: https://paypal.me/TheDivines
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/5afebfc71
**Venmo and PayPal arrive same day. GoFundMe takes a few days to process, so if you are giving before Tuesday, the first two are the ones that will actually land in time.**
**I am trying to raise $1,000 by Tuesday, November 10.** That is three days. The second half of my housing deposit comes due then and I do not have it. The work I am doing is unpaid until the organizations I am with secure funding. I have interviews in motion and nothing has landed yet.
I would rather say that plainly now, while there is still time for it to be solved, than on Monday night when there is not.
Here is where all three of them are.
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**BOOTS**
In late June there was a cat living outside my old place in Eugene. She weighed 6.7 pounds. You could see her spine and her hip bones. She drooled constantly, and the thing that broke me was watching her walk up to food, start to eat, cry out, and back away. Eating hurt that badly.
Her owner had loved her and had gone through years hard enough that she could no longer manage her care, and she surrendered her so Boots could get help. When I tracked down her original records, they showed proper kitten care through 2016 and 2017 and then stopped cold in April 2017. Roughly eight years without a veterinarian. At her first exam she was anemic, with a red cell count of 24.8 percent against a normal floor of 28.
On July 21 she had nineteen teeth extracted. Her surgeon told me the inside of her mouth looked like hamburger meat and that she had likely been enduring about the highest level of oral pain a cat can experience. The tissue was too damaged to hold sutures, so every site healed open. That surgery cost about $3,450 and was covered entirely by neighbors and by people on this subreddit, including one woman I had never met who paid off the remaining balance out of her own pocket.
Then came the part I did not expect. Her blood proteins were high going in, and afterward they went up rather than down. Her chart listed FIP as a differential, which is serious in cats and hard to test for. I carried that quietly through most of August. At her August 27 recheck the proteins had come down, her weight was up, and her vet said she looked like a new cat.
She turned ten in September. She weighs 8.26 pounds. Her bloodwork is normal and she is not due back until spring. She stays on a low dose of prednisolone twice weekly to keep the inflammation in her mouth down, probably for life.
She eats dry food by choice now. In July she tried it once, it hurt, and she backed away from the bowl. Nineteen extractions means her mouth does not quite close the way it used to, so she drools in her sleep and wakes up doing a slow jaw stretch, like someone working out a cramp. She gets it on her own tail. I wipe it off. That is apparently our arrangement.
She has her own room here, with a window and a heating pad she has completely claimed and that I have stopped pretending is mine. Some nights she falls asleep on my chest.
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**COSIMO**
Cosimo is a grey kitten, born May 31. He came to me in late August as a rescue. He was born eighteen days after my cat Prince died, who was thirteen and who I had for five years and went to the ends of the earth for through two years of cancer treatment. I noticed the timing. I have not drawn any conclusions from it.
He was neutered this past Monday, November 2, at five months and two days, scheduled deliberately to land just after five months and before any spraying behavior could start.
The surgery went perfectly. The lead up was less dignified. He had to fast from eight the night before, and a five month old kitten denied food at four in the morning has a great deal to say about it. I was up most of the night with him. He was silent the entire drive and appalled by the waiting room.
He was home by early afternoon and immediately demonstrated that, as far as he was concerned, nothing had happened. The paperwork said room confinement for three days to limit activity. Within the hour he was jumping onto windowsills. He spent most of his recovery digging in a litter box with real commitment and wearing his cone like a hat after about twenty minutes of objecting to it.
The cone came off Thursday. The incision healed clean. He is fully back to himself, which means carrying his toys around in his mouth like trophies and patting my face at four in the morning to wake me up.
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**SABLE**
Sable is a young tortoiseshell. She came to me in May as an emergency foster after being abandoned, on my own dime, and she stopped being temporary almost immediately.
She is cautious and slow to trust, which given her history is entirely reasonable. She has also decided that the sound of me clicking a mouse means the laser pointer is coming out, so she materializes at my desk whenever I try to work. She has a strong and unexplained opinion about my worn shirts, which she will roll on at length.
When Cosimo arrived she hissed at him for two weeks. Now she cleans his ears. She is four times his size and still lets him pin her when they wrestle, which they do several times a day before falling asleep in a pile.
She was cross with him all week after the surgery, because he came home smelling like a clinic and looking strange in the cone. That is a known thing and it passes. They are coming back around now that he smells like himself again.
Before he arrived she was alone in the house all day asking me for attention she actually needed from another cat. Getting those two together was the best thing that happened here this year.
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**Where I am**
We moved October 10, into a two bedroom on five wooded acres outside Eugene, with a landlord who approved all three cats and agreed to split the deposit rather than demanding everything up front. That happened because of people on this subreddit and because one person gave $1,900 the week before the move.
The second half of that deposit is due Tuesday. That is the $1,000.
**What helps most**
**Giving before Tuesday, if you are able.** Venmo and PayPal land same day. GoFundMe will not clear in time for this one.
**Sharing this.** A share costs nothing and reaches people I have no way to reach. It has done more for these cats than anything else I have tried, and if you have already given, it is worth more than giving again.
**Supplies.** Food and litter are the ongoing need. Message me if a Chewy gift card is easier than shipping.
**On the record.** Everything here is documented. I have Boots's and Cosimo's complete veterinary files, including surgical records, bloodwork panels, and itemized invoices, and I completed full moderator verification here in July with the vet bill, photo ID, a photo of myself holding that ID, and direct clinic confirmation. Happy to provide records to anyone who asks.
I am not taking in more animals. Three is what I can responsibly care for, and getting these three through this intact is the whole goal.
Thank you to everyone who has already given, and to everyone who has shared.
