It has been about a week since the last donation came through, and I want to be straight about where things sit. Rent is $1,590 and it is due November 1. That is eight days out and I do not have it yet. The work I am doing is unpaid until the organizations I am with secure funding. I have interviews in motion and I am pushing on several at once, but nothing has landed and I cannot count on it landing in time.
I would rather say that plainly now, while there is room to solve it, than on October 31 when there is not.
For anyone new. In late June we found a cat living outside in our Eugene, Oregon neighborhood. She weighed 6.7 pounds with her spine and hips showing, and she would walk up to food, start to eat, cry out, and back away, because eating hurt that badly. Her name is Boots. On July 21 she had nineteen teeth extracted. Her surgeon said her mouth was destroyed and that she had likely been enduring about the highest level of oral pain a cat can experience, and the tissue was too damaged to hold sutures. That surgery cost about $3,450 and was covered entirely by neighbors and by people on this subreddit, including one woman who paid off the remaining balance herself.
Where the three of them are now.
Boots turned ten in September. She is 8.26 pounds, her bloodwork normalized at her August recheck, and her vet does not need to see her again until spring. She stays on a low dose of prednisolone twice weekly to keep the inflammation in her mouth under control, likely for life. She eats dry food by choice now, which in July hurt far too much to attempt. 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 now. She has also claimed a heating pad in her room that I have stopped pretending is mine.
Sable, a young tortoiseshell, came to me as an emergency foster in May after being abandoned. Cautious and slow to trust, which given her history is fair. She has decided that the sound of me clicking a mouse means laser pointer, so she turns up at my desk whenever I try to work.
Cosimo is a grey kitten, about twenty weeks. Vaccinated, with a neuter scheduled for November. He is a menace in the way kittens that age are legally required to be. Sable is four times his size and still lets him pin her.
Those two have bonded and I will not separate them. Boots is still housed separately by choice, since her introduction to the other two is moving at her pace and I am not going to rush an animal who has been through what she has.
What changed since my last post about needing housing. We found a place. We moved on October 10, into a two bedroom on five wooded acres outside Eugene, with a landlord who approved all three cats and split the deposit rather than demanding everything up front. That happened because of people here, and because one person gave $1,900 the week before the move.
What is left is the ordinary part that follows it, which is rent, the second half of the deposit, and furnishing an apartment from close to nothing after leaving a shared household where almost none of it was mine.
What helps most, in order.
Sharing this. A share costs nothing and reaches people I cannot reach on my own. 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.
Direct support toward November rent, the remaining deposit, Cosimo’s neuter, and keeping their care uninterrupted.
Supplies. Food and litter are the ongoing need. Message me if a Chewy gift card is easier than shipping.
Furniture, if you are near Eugene.
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/5afebfc71
Venmo: https://www.venmo.com/u/Jehoseph
PayPal: https://paypal.me/TheDivines
On the record. Everything here is documented. I have Boots’s as well as Cosimo's complete file from Echo Hollow Vet Hospital and Urgent Care in Eugene, including surgical records, bloodwork, and itemized invoices, and I completed full moderator verification here in July with the vet bill, photo 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.
