11/1/17 Isabelle’s story is one of horrible neglect, abuse and lots of drama. She was living at a hoarders house. The hoarder was evicted. The hoarder had her friends hide the cats that were in bad shape. Some one took a picture of Isabelle and posted it to Facebook. This is where the drama starts. Everyone is up in arms to find out where is this cat so she could get the medical help she needed. A small rescue got involved and found where she was a few days later. Isabelle was close to death at this point. She got the person who had her to take her immediately to an emergency vet’s office. The woman told her the hoarder kept telling her she was going to make an appointment for Isabelle but then refused to because of all the drama going on. (Time-line, this is Friday) Her excuse for not taking her also was she had no money to take her. Instead she had her in a cage in her garage dying in pain with a horrible infection. The hoarder agreed to give up ownership. She owes Laura her life for not giving up and doing as much as she did to find her! The rescue put a call out asking for donations because this bill was going to be at least $1000. (In fact it was over 2K) This is where we became involved. I told the rescue we would take care of the bill. I did not want this cat to not have the care she needed and the vets office wants a large deposit. The emergency vet combo tested her and she is FELV+ At this point he was recommending that she be euthanized. We agreed to take over ownership at that point. And we refused for her to be euthanized if she could recover and have a chance for quality of life. The emergency vet felt that she needed her eye removed immediately because it was the source of infection BUT her blood work was so bad that she would never survive the surgery. By the way, she only weighed 3 - THREE Pounds! She is an adult cat!! Absolute skin and bones. We agreed waiting the weekend, keeping her in the hospital, putting her on antibiotics and pain meds was a good plan and then revisit the idea of surgery on Monday. Monday the blood work showed improvement in the white count and the vet felt she might survive surgery. She was eating on her own and seemed bright. We requested a feeding tube while she was under to help us manage her calories. Surgery was done and we had her stay in the hospital another night. Tuesday I drove 2 1/2 hours each way to pick her up and took her straight to our vet to spend another night in the hospital. We wanted to make sure that we are in front of the infection and that she was stable enough to come home. Wednesday she came home. She is now 4 pounds. Skin and bones. She is bright and eating on her own. We do have a feeding tube to supplement her calories to help her gain weight and strength. She is a super sweet, a little purr machine. Even though life has really be horrible to her, she is a very gentle sweet soul. We are blessed to get the chance to give her a good life. Fast forward 2 weeks - she is now 5 pounds, 9 ounces. Eats like a champ and healing. She is a very sweet little girl! 11/20/2019 Update, She has reached 6 pounds!! When she reaches 7 pounds we will allow her to go into her room. 11/25/2017 Update 6 pounds 10 ounces!! This little girl is an eating machine :) 12/9/2017 7 1/2 pounds! Has now had a much needed dental and is happy as a lobby cat. We like having her with us :) Sponsored by Barbara - Thank you! Sponsored by Sue - Thank you! Sponsored by Melissa - Thank you! Sponsored by Diana - Thank you! Sponsored by MaryBeth - Thank you!

3/6/19 This is a very painful letter to be writing today. Isabelle, who was leukemia positive, came to us 16 months ago from a horrific hoarding situation close to death. We nursed her back to health and she thrived. She developed a lot of mouth problems (stomatitis, etc) 6-8 months ago and received so many different treatments. She was going to the vet weekly for months. Eastern medicine, western, acupuncture, and of course dental's. You name it, she had it. Last month her mouth had developed an ulcer on her tongue. The vets felt that it was either oral cancer or a bad herpes flare. So she was receiving tons of different meds to try to cure her mouth. She was on lots of pain meds too. Her tongue today looked like it was splitting basically in 2. She was in pain (keep in mind she was on a lot of pain meds) It was clearly time to say enough. We believe that it is better to go out on a good day versus a bad day. She was reaching the end of a good day and heading fast towards really bad days.... She had a bowl of her favorite warm KMR, lots of loving from the staff as they said their goodbyes and sat in my lap looking at the birds outside the window at the vet's office as she crossed over the rainbow bridge. This little girl stole all of our hearts. She was a kind gentle soul who did not have a mean bone in her body. We were so blessed to have had a chance to know her. We are happy knowing that she spent the last year of her life knowing nothing but love and comfort. My heart is broken.