IF CATS COULD TALK…
When beloved cat Little Leggies was found after being missing for weeks, she was so ill her family weren’t sure if she would survive the night…
When a missing cat was found, she faced a battle to survive.
Fiona O’Leary thought she would never see the family’s pet cat again. Little Leggies had been missing for six weeks and during that time there hadn’t been one sighting — and the weather had been atrocious, with fierce snow, wild winds, and extreme cold dipping to minus nine degrees celsius.
The family, of Welham Green in Hertfordshire, had done everything possible to find the tabby and white cat, but it looked like it would be a miracle if she had been able to survive the unforgiving winter. Fiona’s partner, Ronnie, had even set up a Ring doorbell with a video camera at the back door so they could monitor the garden in case Little Leggies returned when they were out. But to no joy. So Fiona thought she should face facts and cancel the monthly insurance payment as Little Leggies was never going to return.
But luckily — just minutes before she did — she got a call to say their cat had been found, but Little Leggies’s life was hanging in the balance.
VERY UNWELL
“It was remarkable that she was found — and alive,” said Fiona, 49.“We thought we would never see her again but in an amazing stroke of luck, a veterinary nurse in the next village had a day off and saw Little Leggies collapsed in the middle of her garden.
“She realised that our cat was ill and read her chip as fortunately she had a scanner at home.
“We managed to get her to the vet’s as an emergency. My partner, who has owned cats all his life, came home from work and said she was too poorly to survive until her appointment the next morning. She was so ill it wasn’t clear if she would survive.”
Little Leggies was dishevelled, filthy, and weak, and the poor cat was unable to put any weight on one of her legs. She had lost more than half her body weight (weighing just 2.5kg) and had near fatal anaemia due to a massive tick and flea infestation. On top
of that, she had a dislocated elbow which she must have had while battling through the snow and ice for weeks.
It’s a mystery where Little Leggies had been for all that time and how she managed to survive the harsh weather conditions. Fiona’s daughter Poppy McDonnell, 21, said:
“We have no idea how she managed to stay alive and how she travelled the couple of miles to the next village, crossing a busy road. Her travels will remain to us an enigma: it’s such a pity cats can’t talk as I think she would have an incredible tale to tell us!”
Initially, Little Leggies was incredibly unwell and was hospitalised for 24-hour care for three days. She was still too weak to survive surgery for her poorly leg and needed iron injections, painkillers, controlled refeeding, and lots of TLC from the family. She was confined to one room and the family took turns to keep her company and sleep on the floor with her, so she didn’t climb furniture with her dislocated elbow. After three weeks, she was strong enough to endure the operation to repair her elbow with a titanium replacement.
“The vet said that if she’d been found any later — a matter of hours — then she would not have lived. She was very, very lucky,” added Fiona. “Both the vets and the Cats Protection officer who helped us when we were looking for her said if she wasn’t up to date with her flea and tick medications before she went missing, neutered and vaccinated, she wouldn’t have survived.”
A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY
But the half Maine Coon — who was a post-GCSE present to Poppy as a kitten in September 2016 — hung in there, fighting for her life and with specialist treatment and lots of love and care from the team at Medivets in Potters Bar, she started to slowly recover from her injuries.
Fiona said:“When she came home from surgery, she was still weak and needed to stay in a crate
24/7 downstairs for six weeks. Poppy was mainly away at university. At night, Little Leggies would be lonely and so I would sleep downstairs on the floor with her, unzipping the front of the crate just enough so that my hand could fit inside, and she could cuddle up to it (despite usually not being a cuddly cat since she returned).”
There was no further news of where Little Leggies could have been or what had happened to her but she gradually started to improve and in four months had regained most of the weight she lost. With months of treatment and ongoing medication, the vet bill had racked up.
“Little Leggies’s treatment came to a massive £8,800 plus medicine, but with a discount of £880 with our vets care plan discount it worked out at £7,984 — only £16 under our ceiling of £8,000 for the year,” said Fiona, a dietitian.“We managed to keep costs low too by getting private prescriptions from the vet for her painkillers and buying painkillers online.”
PET INSURANCE
Student Poppy added:“So, the moral of the story is: always get good pet insurance! We would have never been able to afford to give our lovely Leggies a fighting chance without it.
“There is no way that putting £30 a month away in a savings account instead of paying insurance premiums would have given us enough to pay the vets’ fees to save our lovely Little Leggies.”
The vets were so impressed with Little Leggies they gave her their Braveheart Award for being outstandingly brave.
The five-year-old cat, who was originally called Tabitha but nicknamed Little Leggies due to her tiny little legs compared with the size of her tail when she was a kitten, had always loved being outdoors but since her snowy adventure she has stayed closer to home.
Poppy said:“She still goes off on the odd expedition but now is always home for dinner and bedtime.
“Ever since mum slept downstairs with her in the crate, she comes up to bed with one of us every night, even sitting by the stairs looking annoyed if it is past 10 o’clock and we haven’t gone up with her yet!” Little Leggies then wraps her once-sore leg around Fiona or Poppy’s neck to hug them when they go to sleep.
“We are so thankful to have her home again and that she has recovered so well,” added Fiona.“We just wish that we could find out what really happened to her for those weeks and how she managed to survive the awful weather
— if only she could talk!”