Team Tinkerbell

Meet Tinkerbell! She’s a very special foster kitten of ours and we desperately need your help to give her the best life possible!

Tinkerbell came to us as a tiny 3 week old kitten from another rescue. They were going to euthanize her due to her inability to walk. We were not afraid of this and took her in with open arms and an open heart.

Tinkerbell saw our regular vet and orthopedic surgeon and she was diagnosed with hemivertebrae which caused a curvature in her spine. We were told eventually as she grows this could compress her spinal cord and lead to further issues but we hoped this would never be the case.

Tinkerbell went through weeks of physical therapy and got stronger and eventually learned to “walk” in her own way and gets around great. The only thing is she can’t go to the bathroom on her own, she has to be stimulated like a new born.

We were confident in all the progress she had made and she even found a home. So we had her spayed! Unfortunately this caused her to regress. She lost control of her bowel/bladder and lost all the progress on her legs. Thankfully after a few weeks this all came back. When she returned to the vet for her rabies vaccine before going home I did X-rays to check her growth and thats when our vet was finally able to see a healing fracture in her spine. We sent the X-rays over to her ortho surgeon who was shocked that Tinkerbell wasn’t paralyzed yet let alone running around and still going to the bathroom on her own when stimulated. He said he couldn’t do anything further and we needed to see the neurologist.

So we did and Tinkerbell had an MRI. This showed us some different stuff. It confirmed hemivertebrae of her upper spine and showed us a fracture of L4. She has spinal cord atrophy in her lumbar area. Thankfully the cervical area is all intact and nothing appears to be dead, just compressed. We now know Tinkerbell needs spinal surgery to stabilize her spinal and decompress her spinal cord before damage progresses. The goal is to stabilize, she likely will not improve, but tink is happy the way she is.

Unfortunately kittens bones don’t show up really well on MRIs, it’s hard to explain. But she needs a CT scan so the neurologist can carefully map out and measure his repair/fusion of her spine. This is an absolute necessity. She is so small and he has very little space and the smallest error could be detrimental.

After the CT is done he will plan his surgery and immediately get her in for the repair, pending we have the funding. Here’s where we need your help. The longer we wait, the higher risk there is that tink will move the wrong way or her spinal cord will continue to atrophy.

We desperately need your help to pay for Tinkerbells scans and surgery. Most people think we are insane for doing this, but how can you look at Tinkerbell and tell her she isn’t worthy of Saving? I can’t do that. We made a commitment to her. Please consider skipping that morning starbucks and donating just a few dollars towards Tinkerbells vet bills. If everyone who saw this post donated just $5, we would be set. Any and all donations count, we couldn’t do this without you.

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