TLDR; A stray cat that I’ve been taking care of for years suddenly came back with a broken tail and I do not have the money available to have her treated.

UPDATE- 2/25/26

Thanks to all of you, Pumpkin’s surgery was a success! I was lucky enough that the emergency vet I took her to accepted payment plans so with your guys’ donation, I’ve been paying it off smoothly. I’ve got a few payments left, but I’ll be forever grateful to the generosity I was shown!

WHAT HAPPENED? - I should have updated sooner, sorry for the delay!! Her broken tail ended up needing to be amputated. Somewhere along the line, the top-half of her broken tail had fallen off due to it “dying”. (There was a certain word for this but for the life of me I can’t remember!!) According to the doctors it happened as naturally and as cleanly as possible- which was good! But there wasn’t enough skin on the tail to cover it up (gross) so they had to amputate it down to a little stub.

Pumpkin was as well behaved as she could be both at the ER and at the vet! She’s been with me ever since and I intend to keep her. She’s not used to being a house kitty and is still pretty skittish but she’s improved tremendously in terms of trust and how jumpy she used to be. Pumpkin loves a good petting and is the chattiest cat that I have!!!

OLD POST-

Ever since I moved into my first place with my girlfriend and her sisters in August 2023, we’ve bonded with a stray cat in our area. The town we live in has a lot of strays, but this stray in particular seemed to stay in our backyard monthly, which became weekly, and then before we knew it, Pumpkin (I named her!) slept in our backyard, came when we called her, and cozied up in the little homes we’d make for her as the seasons passed by.

We already have five cats, which delayed the process of trapping her and bringing her inside to officially call this place her home. But now, after she’s been gone for days (which was out of character for her), suddenly her tail is dragging behind her, totally limp.

It breaks my heart to see my sweet girl, who I worked so hard to get to this level with, struggling to jump and acting more nervous than usual. I want to trap her and take her to the vet, where I can finally bring her inside at long last and care for her like how I’ve been wanting to for a while, but in truth, I just do not have the money available for this entire procedure.

At most, they’ll have to amputate her tail, and that surgery is going to cost a lot. I have the goal at $3,000 since that’s the estimate I’ve seen the most often, but honestly, I don’t even know if it’ll be more than that. I haven’t taken her to the vet yet because I quite literally do not have that money on me in any shape or form to even know if that’s more than I need or less than I need.

Of course, I’ll update accordingly as I want to be as honest and crystal clear as possible about this! If it ends up being more than I needed, I’ll donate any extra funds to a nearby and well-known TNR program in my town.

Thank you so much in advance—anything at all would help. And if you can’t donate, that’s okay, I’ve been there; just sharing will be enough! I appreciate any help at ALL in this process. Again, I’ll update as Pumpkin’s story progresses.