Help save Echo the cat!

Hello, this is Echo.  She's a five year old female short hair and we are her people, Mike and Emily.  Together we are the Archer family.

We spend time in the garden:

And hang out in the shower, but only behind the safety of the shower curtain liner:

On Thursday (10/01/2015) Echo's life changed forever, as did ours, when she did not return home in the evening.  We searched all over, asked neighbors, and prepared posters.  We were very concerned because this was unike Echo; she is a routine cat that enjoys being in the sun but sleeping by our sides.


Finally, after 36 hours, Echo arrived at our back window, but something was very wrong with her.   Her movements were incredibly slow and pained.  She could not close her mouth, the edge of her eye had an abrasion, and she looked as though other things were wrong under her fur.  We took her to an emergency Vet immediately.


The Vet determined from her inspection that Echo had a fractured jaw and it was likely that she had been hit by a car.  That was so shocking to us!  We thought she had been in a fight, it was so much worse than we had imagined.  

She would need surgery to have her jaw wired along with further tests and x-rays to check out the rest of her injuries.  The bill for those tests and monitoring her overnight would be $1800 without any surgery.


That was hard to stomach. We do not have that kind of money, but we want to do right by our cat. The vet told us that we would need to go to a speciality Vetinary Hopspital in Philadelphia which had an emergency department and dental surgeons on hand, who gave us an estimate before we arrived for potential costs.   The price was a heart wrenching $4400 without any complications. 


We had to let that sink in for a minute and realized that even if we had Echo stay the night at the local emergency vet, she would just need to be transferred the next day for a dental surgery consultation anyway. So we paid our bill of $200 at 1:00am and headed to Philadelphia in the cold and rain.

When we got there we had to sign in and they took Echo immediately to be assessed.  It took a while for the Doctor to come out again and speak to us and heartbreakingly there was another couple in the waiting room who were facing an $8000 bill for their own sick cat. It was scary to think that we might be facing a similar bill sometime in the near future. 

When the Doctor emerged, she explained Echo's internal injuries...something we hadn't known was an issue until this point.  She also started talking numbers. She told us that her jaw could be left a little while because that was not life threatening but her suspected internal injuries do need to be immediately addressed.

We felt like our hearts stopped. 

Echo has a torn diaphragm and organs were in her chest cavity. She also has at least one hernia in her abdomen and organs pushing through to her fat pouch.  Her rear leg had an open wound that exposed her tendon, that if not treated properly, could result in the loss of the leg.

The best case scenario would cost us $5500 before treating her broken jaw or leg wound, and without complication. There was a chance that when they opened her up, there could be damage to the organs themselves and risk of toxic shock due to reduced blood flow in those organs, and a slew of other potential issues.

We were not ready to say goodbye to her.  She is only 5 years old.  Echo is a great cat with a great personality whom we love...but we could not afford her treatment.  We have no savings and only a lone credit card with which to try and use.

We decided to try and find the money any way we could and agreed to have her stay over night and speak to the hospital again after her surgery consultation.   We got the chance to say goodbye to her, just in case the very worst happened. And after many tears, we got in the car at 5am and drove the 40 minutes home.

The call came the next morning around 10am (which felt like the longest morning in the world, waiting for news).
The Doctor said that Echo needed to have surgery today and that her odds of surviving were  good, as long as long as everything went well. She may need a chest tube, a feeding tube, and although they were going to take a closer look under general anesthetic, they thought she might need at some point in the future to have her damaged leg amputated because of the depth of the wound, which was all utterly shocking to us. 



We were both so heartbreakingly torn because we did not want Echo to suffer through surgery if her quality of life was not going to be good. Surviving surgery only to suffer for the rest of her life was not what we wanted for her, but we didn't want to give up on her either.



Against all odds, she came home. Echo fought to get back to a place she knew was safe and to come back to us.  Imagine the effort it took to push through your injuries with the vision of being back home, where you've created your life.  Where you feel yourself, warm, comfortable, welcome.  She pushed so hard, we took it as a sign.  Of course we loved her and wanted life for her, but she wants to live!  She just wants to go home. We decided to also fight and give her a chance.  We agreed to go ahead with the surgery and hoped her she was willing to push a little further.

It was late that night, when we heard from the Doctor. She made it though surgery and things went well. It was 5-6 hours long.  Her internal injuries were not as bad as they could have been, her organs were still in good shape and the tears to her diaphragm and two hernias were repaired.  They put a wire in her jaw so she could open her mouth and did not need to insert a feeding tube, though a chest tube was needed to drain her chest fluid.


The first chance we got to see Echo after surgery the Doctor told us that she was still in a critical condition. She was still on strong pain medicine, her shaved areas showed her severe brusing, and she kept trying to stand up only to flop and fall. She didn't seem to know we were  there but there was a moment where she let me scratch the side of her face and she leaned into it as though she was enjoying it. 

She walked out of her cage, climbed into Mike's lap, and went to sleep. Her IV line was still attached, her leg bandaged, and stitches run the length of her underside.


Right now her predicted medical bills will be around $8/9000 with an additional $1-2000 in the coming months for after care.

We have credit cards that will cover some of it but we really need your kindness to help us get the rest of the way.  She will be in intensive care for a few more days.  It all depends on whether she can continue to fight and get better.


We really need all the help we can get.  Any donation amount will help us, we are taking on as much credit card debt as we are able but there is still a sizeable amount we can not cover on our own. In the instance that we get more through gofundme than we owe in medical bills and follow up appointments, we are going to donate every single cent left over to the vetinary hospital so they can continue to assist those in need.

We didn't feel comfortable taking pictures immediatly after surgery since they could have been very sad images depending on her outcome.  These pictures are from our second visit.

Your donation, however small, will help us to afford the very best medical care for Echo, she is a big part of our family and we miss her so much while she is in hospital fighting for her life. 

Thank you for reading,

Emily, Mike, and Echo Archer