Help Ashly Cover Emergency Vet Bills for Roxy

Hi all! Many of you know my wonderful bestie, Ashly, and her love for animals. Ashly has been rescuing stray cats in her neighborhood for years now. She built an outdoor cat house with food, water (and heating pads and heated food and water bowls during the winter) so that the neighborhood cats would have a safe place to hang.

Ashly has also been trapping, evaluating, and getting many of the neighborhood cats vet care (including vaccines, getting them fixed, etc.) and has been adopting them out at no charge to anyone. Ashly does all of this out of the kindness of her own heart and pays for everything on her own. Ashly is one of the kindest, most caring people I have ever met, and the love she has for animals is truly amazing.

Ashly recently trapped a new cat (who she named Roxy) and found out the cat was pregnant after bringing her inside!! She decided to foster Roxy and her future kittens. Ashly has been taking care of Roxy for over a month now in her home in Hammond (where she already has 6 cats and 1 dog of her own).

Yesterday, on April 5th, Roxy went into labor. It was progressing pretty slowly at first, but eventually she was in active labor for over an hour, was showing serious signs of distress and was unable to birth any kittens. Ashly had been checking-in with the emergency vet since this was all happening overnight and was instructed to bring Roxy in. They thought they may be able to assist Roxy in having a natural birth, but found out that the kittens were too large to pass through her pelvic bone (the medical term for this is dystocia - kittens unable to pass through the birth canal) and she had to have an emergency c-section. The cost was estimated to be between $3500 and $4700 and Ashly had to pay $3500 up front before they would perform the surgery, so she did because she felt there was no other option.

Roxy went into surgery around 1am on April 6th. During the surgery, the vet called Ashly letting her know that one kitten had already passed away and that another was born with its intestines on the outside of its body, so they asked her permission to euthanize. Later that morning, Ashly received word that mama Roxy was out of surgery and doing well and that her 4 remaining kittens were doing "okay." The kittens would need to be bottle fed (every 2 hours!!) in the coming weeks because Roxy was not producing enough milk yet, and they would also need to be watched very closely.

Ashly tried to reach out to a shelter for assistance because of her busy work schedule, but all volunteers already had kittens and weren't able to take any more or help with the bottle feeding and monitoring.

Ashly is continuing to foster Roxy and her kittens at her home in Hammond, but could really use some help with the unexpected medical expenses. Anything at all is truly appreciated and will go directly toward paying off the credit card expense for the vet bill from Roxy's surgery. Ashly is continuing to pay out of pocket for all additional costs associated with Roxy and her four kittens.

To top it all off, Ashly had to take Roxy and her kittens back to the emergency vet on the evening of April 6th because Roxy was breathing heavily and in distress. Roxy had developed mastitis and would need additional meds.

On her way to the vet this second time, Ashly spotted an injured kitten on the side of the highway on ramp (I know, crazy, right?!). She, being the kind-hearted human that she is, stopped and helped capture this approximately 12-week old kitten with the help of a random stranger who saw what was happening and pulled over to help. Ashly brought this kitten to the vet along with Roxy and her kittens, and although the vet was extremely kind and helped as much as they could, Ashly ended up with additional vet bills for both Roxy and this new kitten. Ashly took highway kitten home and is now also fostering him and helping him heal in a separate space of her home.

I literally don't know anyone else who is this dedicated and willing to care for animals, but Ashly is a truly amazing human.

Thank you so much for reading, and for donating anything you can!

-Ali