Please help Annie, our little orphan miracle baby, get the surgeries she needs to walk again after traumatic injuries to both front legs. We are a retired military family and we volunteer in the community to spay/neuter cats and we also do some limited animal rescue.

The abbreviated version of the story is that Annie and her brother Apollo's mother was intentionally killed by a car when they were kittens. They spent a few months in our home and two foster homes, and then after a month with a potential forever home Annie escaped out of an open door.

We believe that she was hit by a car a few days later, breaking one front leg and paralyzing the other. She survived miraculously for six weeks in the sewers by pulling herself along on one elbow, but was within days of death from starvation when someone saw her and called us. Emaciated and only 3.9 pounds (should be 7.5), she also had the Giardia parasite and Hookworm, along with numerous other injuries.

She is now nearly 6 pounds. In about six weeks she will be ready for surgery to correct the broken leg that healed crooked, but her paralyzed leg may have to be amputated.

We have a total of eleven (11) sick or injured rescue cats in our home currently, and Annie's surgery for the right leg alone is estimated at $6,000-$10,000, plus a likely left leg amputation surgery, physical therapy and continuing medications for the next few months. We've already spent over $3,000 on the emergency room visit, medications, follow-up veterinary visits, and physical therapy and orthopedic consultations. We understand that not everyone can help, but if you can at least help share her fundraiser we would greatly appreciate it!

The longer version of Annie's story:

Annie's story began in June 2024 when we trapped, neutered/spayed and released (TNR) a female cat in our neighborhood colony of about 100 free-roaming and feral cats. To our surprise, a few days later this cat showed up at the feeding station with four tiny kittens that had somehow survived alone for two days while their mother was being spayed. Here in Hawai'i that meant surviving starvation, dehydration, other cats, mongoose, wild boars, neighborhood dogs, and a very dangerous road.

A month later a neighbor witnessed an SUV swerve into the bicycle lane to purposely kill the Momma Cat, leaving the four kittens as orphans, too young to survive on their own. We searched for several weeks, but only Annie and her brother Apollo survived.

Over the next few months, we worked with Annie and her brother to socialize them for future adoption, and got them spayed/neutered, shots and microchipped, etc. With seven sick and injured rescue cats already in our home we didn't have room for two more, so we fostered Annie and Apollo out to experienced foster homes to help with their socialization.

The goal was to find a good forever home who could take Annie and Apollo as a bonded pair. With an estimated 1 million free-roaming and feral cats on Oahu we weren't finding anyone who could take both kittens, but then finally found a military family who seemed to be a good match. We conducted interviews with the family, brought them in to meet the kittens, did an in-home visit at their home, and everything seemed to be a good fit. We established a 30-day trial period prior to formal adoption, and all seemed to be going well.

Not long after the 30-day trial period we got a call from the family saying that they hadn't seen Annie for a few days, and believed that she escaped outside. We drove up immediately and searched the neighborhood for hours, returning to search again multiple times over the next few days with no sign of Annie. Having never been taught to hunt or feed herself, Annie was alone and starving, in a neighborhood full of busy streets, dogs, feral cats, and a large assortment of deadly diseases and parasites.

Not wanting the same or worse fate for Apollo we took him back from the family, and then plastered Lost posters for several blocks in every direction. We tested Apollo again and he was positive for a parasite called Giardia, that he got from the family's other new kitten, and then a month later he also tested positive for Cryptosporidium. There is no effective treatment for Cryptosporidium, and it’s highly contagious to other cats and also contagious to people.

For many weeks we fielded calls from scammers who said they had Annie and wanted money, and from teenagers making prank calls, and after six weeks we began to fear that Annie had died out there alone.

Then, after more than six weeks, a young military wife who lived about four blocks away from where Annie escaped, saw a skinny and injured white kitten emerge from a sewer drain near her house and hide under a neighbor's car. She started feeding the kitten, and told her neighbor about it also. Fortunately, her neighbor had seen one of our flyers, and thought it could be the same kitten. She called us, and the moment we pulled up and saw her we knew it was Annie. She went right into our trap, and we could see immediately that she was severely emaciated and was holding up her left front leg.

We rushed her immediately to an emergency veterinary clinic, where she weighed 3.9 lbs., about half what an eight-month-old kitten should weigh. The exam found multiple wounds from head to tail, her left leg was extremely atrophied and paralyzed with likely radial nerve damage, her left elbow was raw from pulling herself along with it, and her left wrist was also injured. X-rays showed the biggest surprise though... her "good" leg, the right front, had broken radius and ulna bones (a compound oblique fracture) from about 6 weeks prior, which had rotated 60 degrees and is healing out of alignment. It was clear that Annie had suffered traumatic injuries consistent with being hit by a car, and it happened within days of escaping more than six weeks prior.

This explained why her left elbow was scraped raw, and why she was so skinny: for six weeks her right front leg was broken and her left front leg was basically paralyzed from the elbow down, so the only way that this poor kitten could move around to find food was to drag herself using her left elbow. We have no idea how Annie was able to find food or even protect herself from feral cats and any other threats with no working front legs for six weeks. A few days later the labs came back that she also had the Giardia parasite, probably exposed at the same time as Apollo before she escaped, and she also had Hookworm.

The orthopedic veterinary surgeon is confident that once the right leg has healed completely, he can re-break the radius and ulna, realign everything properly, and reinforce it with a metal plate so she can walk normally on it. If we don’t do the surgery, he believes Annie would develop severe arthritis and other joint issues. This surgery is estimated at $6,000 to $10,000, on top of the $3,000 already paid. The prognosis for the left front leg is not as good, with amputation as the most likely outcome.

Not wanting to rush into an amputation, we began physical therapy and are trying to see what is wrong with her left front wrist in the hopes that once we fix the wrist she might be able to use the left leg again. If surgery on the wrist is needed it will likely cost about the same as the right leg surgery, plus the cost of physical therapy before and afterwards, etc. If the left wrist cannot be corrected, then the entire left leg will probably have to be amputated at the shoulder in order to prevent her from trying to chew it off (animals will often try to do this when they have a damaged limb).

Annie and her brother Apollo are now safely under the same roof, but due to the contagious parasites they both had, they have to be quarantined separately for at least a few more weeks. We had to follow a strict "Refeeding Syndrome" diet to get Annie's body used to processing food again (similar to what was done for holocaust survivors), but she is now out of the woods and on a regular slow weight gain diet. Her follow-up tests are now negative for parasites and worms, and she was negative for cryptosporidium which her brother has.

We now have a total of 11 cats in various stages of rescue, seven of which have already become permanent members of the family, and almost all with some type of medical condition including asthma, kidney & liver failure, IBS, arthritis, and numerous prescription diets. Four of them are special needs, including Annie.

If you've read this entire history, thank you for caring! We are confident that the surgery on her right front leg will give her the full use of that limb again, and we will try everything we can for the left leg before the last option of amputation. We are hoping the left wrist can be corrected so that amputation is not necessary, but are waiting for a follow-up exam on 20 Feb and better imaging.

Regardless of Annie’s health status, she has a permanent home with us for life. We understand that many people are not able to donate, but please help share Annie’s story so it can reach others who may be able to help.

Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much)!!

Here are additional photos. Annie and her brother Apollo are both FlamePoint Siamese (white with orange on the tail, nose and eartips) and have blue eyes.