My friend Gretchen's sweet 5-year-old kitty Gus is very ill and the emergency bills have gone through the roof. Please consider helping us save Gus. Gretchen is an extremely generous, big-hearted person who spends all of her free time rescuing cats in our community. Please consider sending a donation her way - anything helps.

Gus is at the emergency vet for the second time in 24 hours and they're expecting to keep him for another two days, with the vet bills expected to top $6k. Gus stopped eating over the weekend and Sunday morning Gretchen knew it was time to take him in to the emergency vet. A bad morning was made worse when her car wouldn't start and she had to Uber to the emergency vet in the next town over. He was there all day, given antibiotics and they found pus in his chest. They drained his chest and sent him home. (Sunday's bill below.)

By Tuesday Gus was back at the vet. Still not eating, still not improving. Sweet Gus was clearly not doing well. This evening they performed surgery to place a feeding tube to keep him going and a chest drain to help clear up the infection. They're going to keep him for two days to ensure his infection clears up and he's out of the woods before he goes home.

Gus is a loving kitty and he belongs to one of the kindest people I know. Gretchen volunteers with one of the animal rescue organizations in Bellingham, giving countless hours to saving cats. She's involved at every step of their journey - she helps with intake, coordinating vet care, coordinating with fosters, ensuring cats are ready for adoption, reviewing applications, interviewing applicants and finally, sending hundreds of cats on to their new forever homes with families that will love them as much as she loves Gus. Gretchen fosters medical cases that need careful attention, she has contributed to development of new policies, procedures and is basically superwoman because she's doing all of that on top of working a full-time job in the medical field and as a travel agent. It's incredible, and we're all in awe of how much of herself she gives to these cats. She gives her all, and this GoFundMe is an attempt at helping the community and other cat-lovers give back to her in her time of need. All funds raised will be put toward offsetting the costs of Gus's care.

Below are images of the estimate for his two-day stay, for transparency.