Starving to thriving

Mary Elizabeth in 2009 at 2+ years of age, post pregnancy.

I was looking through my pet photos of all the kitties that have been for the last 15 years or so and was shocked by the apparent transformation of my mom's two kitties, Mary and Emma. 

Mary, as seen here on the left, was so emaciated that I originally believed she had some exotic species blended in there somewhere. But that was not the case. She was just starving. 

Mary had been given up to the SPCA for adoption because she was pregnant--not that that was her fault. Her previous owner did not have her spayed, and either let her out to do what nature calls for, or allowed another of their cats that were probably also not neutered, to mate with her. She was given away, pregnant. 

Mary Elizabeth one year ago

The SPCA sent her to a foster home to be cared for during the gestation.  Look at her face. She is starving. I have had a lot of cats throughout my life and have had one or two that became pregnant along the way [I have learned through the years that it is better to have them spayed/neutered] and if they are eating right, they do not get like this. She weighed just five pounds! There is no excuse. 


Her most recent picture show that she is now a healthy weight, despite not having any teeth! It seems her malnutrition and poor care through the first two years of her life led to gingivitis and bone loss in her jaw. She started losing her teeth and instead of prolonging her suffering through the eventual loss, we chose to remove all her teeth at once. That has not stopped her from eating and, in fact, she has stabilized her weight at 10 pounds. Just right for her frame. 

Emma in 2009 from shelter

Emma also came home that day in 2009. She, like Mary was also starving, and not quite four pounds. She was 1.5 years old at the time. She should have been full grown. She should have weighed more like eight or ten pounds. She slept a lot in those first few months, slowly gaining strength and weight. She has the softest of voices, barely audible, and her fur is as soft as silk. She has that adorable calico nose, although the rest of her is pure tiger. 

Emma 2013

Now Emma is quite the little princess, and fully formed at a normal weight of 8.5 pounds. She doesn't like when I visit because I am the one who gives her the hairball medicine and trims her toenails, but she gives me head butts anyway, and always poses for pictures. 

Last year I took in two pussycats who were roaming wild through the area near my home. They both were full of fleas and ticks and cling-ons of all sorts, but they were not as emaciated as my mom's two cats had been. They were starving--they were eating out of our compost pile until we started giving them "cat food"--and they were both about the same ages as Mary and Emma--but they each weighed ten pounds when we took them to the vet for a checkup and plans for surgery. 

I can only conclude that people, and not the otherwise circumstances of these cats' lives, were responsible for Mary and Emma's advanced conditions of starvation. What does that say about those people? I don't know for sure, but I know they would not be my friends. 

Mary, Christmas 2014

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