Finnigan's Leg (or lack thereof)

TL;DR:

Finn, Katie's youngest and Bucky's only son, has to have one of his front legs amputated with very little notice. On the bright side, his prognosis is very hopeful, and after surgery, he should be fully healthy. On the other hand, he won't have a front leg. And his surgery is going to cost us a whole lot more money than we have.

Approximately a month and a half ago, Bucky and Perrin give Finn a bad haircut, and, upon shaving his overgrown mane, discovered a weird mass on his shoulder. He's since seen his regular vet, and a surgical / oncological specialist, and everyone is a bit baffled. His care team has conferred that the best way to move forward is to treat the mass like a sarcoma (cancer). His CT scan shows no evidence of spread, so, as long as surgery goes well, he should be in the clear, and will be the goofiest, biggest tripod cat any of us have ever seen.

The Long Story;

On July 31st, 2013, Katie's very recent ex-boyfriend called her at 7:30am to say, quote, "There's a kitten in my bathroom, and it isn't mine."

Katie -- the person typing this, so I'll be dropping the third person -- went over to his apartment to investigate the situation, where she found a tiny, fluffy grey kitten sitting in the bath tub of a 3rd story apartment. I don't know how he got there. My best guess is that he climbed up a dryer pipe that wasn't connected to anything. But he was there, and then he came home with me, so I could "foster" him until he was big enough.

I figured he was around 6-7 weeks old when I collected him from the bathtub. A vet visit shortly after revealed that he was actually around 2 or 3 weeks old. And he was just... extremely large. Which, as you all know, he remains.

A few days later, we celebrated my 21st birthday. That's where he got his legal name. Finnigan Birthday Cat. He was there -- an angry, giant kitten, who, unbeknownst to us, had just opened his eyes -- there alongside Tiny and Batcat, just over a year old, and a bunch of friends and coworkers and acquaintances. For the next six years, he moved with me (and Tiny, and Batcat), across apartments and cities and states, through breakups and new jobs and undergrad to grad school to full blown adulthood. For me and for him.

In the spring of 2020, I was travelling for a few weeks, and Finn went to stay with Bucky -- who, at that point, I'd known for six or so months. While I was gone, Bucky defended his dissertation proposal, and Riley, his 5-pound forever kitten, hit Finn on the nose one single time and somehow successfully cured a lifetime of behavioral problems.

That summer, I was planning to move in with a friend who had two cats of her own, so we decided that Finn might do better staying with Bucky and Riley (and his Uncle Bhavan, and eventually, Uncle George). And then a year later I moved into Bucky's apartment (with Tiny, and Batcat, and also a foster mama and her two beautiful orange kittens), and then a couple weeks after that, life got crazy, and the /nine/ of us moved into the 4th Street apartment.

Life kept getting crazy. The foster cats moved out. Bucky and I transitioned to "roommates". The two of us, Tiny, Batcat, Riley, and Finn shared the too-small apartment as a fucked up Brady Bunch for two years. When I got my own place, Batcat and Tiny came with me, and Finn was supposed to come after Tiny settled in. But then I ended up taking in a friends' potentially homeless cats -- the same cats I lived with when Finn originally went to live with Bucky -- and another year went by.

So now, it's 2024. Since I first picked Finn up out of that bathtub, I've gone from 20 to 32. He's lived with Bucky -- sometimes with me, sometimes without me -- for nearly five of those years. And we've all grown up -- together -- a whole lot in that time. And we're a funny little family, but we're family all the same. And we'd do anything for Finn.

And that's the thing. Anyone who has ever met Finn would do anything for him. Anyone who has ever met him -- and in over a decade of house parties and potlucks and backyard bashes, a whole lot of people have met him -- has commented that he's handsome, that he's charming, that he's a big goofy ham. To know Finn is to love him. And love him we do.

Bucky and I aren't the type to ask for help. You all know that. I'm privileged enough to be able to put all the costs for his surgery on a credit card. I'm willing to put myself into (even more) debt to make sure our boy has the best chance to keep rolling on the floor like a mop, tapping strangers on the arm, yelling for attention, and hitting his sisters, for as long as he can. But we're asking for anything any of our friends -- and his friends, near and far -- can contribute to lessen the burden. Genuinely anything helps, and we are more appreciative than you can possibly imagine.

THE DETAILS;

We don't have an itemized receipt yet. But the CT scan he already received cost around $1.5K. And his surgery is going to be around $6.5K. I'll happily provide details as soon as we have them, if anyone desires.

A way a lone a last a loved a long the...