Dr. West and Simon before he left Noah's Ark for his new home.

Simon is the gorgeous lynx point Siamese who I told everyone about a few weeks ago. Simon was the only survivor of a hoarding case in which the elderly woman, who was caring for the cats, entered a nursing home and the cats were all turned out in the snow or left to die, trapped inside the trailer. Luckily, a kind hearted neighbor saw Simon and rescued him just as he was close to death. 

Simon has been through a ton of medical care since then. His feet, when he was first brought in out of the snow, were covered in feces and cat litter from conditions inside the trailer. All of his paws were raw and sore from being caked in this nasty concoction. By the time he came to us, his paws, except one, had healed and that paw had huge scabs on the pads that would pull open and bleed. After weeks of foot soaks and antibiotics, Simon’s feet finally are close to normal, although he will always have scars on the pads from his ordeal. He can, at last, use regular cat litter, as well. For weeks, he had to use Yesterday’s News, the litter made from recycled paper, instead of the finer sand and clay litters to prevent the tiny grains from embedding in his sore pads. 

I also freaked out when I noticed that Simon had a drinking problem. Not that our boy was a lush or anything, but he would actually stop eating to drink water. And he would suck down bowl after bowl until he made himself sick. I worried about diabetes or kidney failure from his near death experience. Instead, Simon had elevated sodium levels due to the fact that he had not had food or water for a very long time and his body began to lose sodium from inside cells. With the sodium outside their normal cellular state, Simon felt as if he had just eaten a can of salty peanuts. Sodium is what makes up salt and so these elevated levels made Simon extremely thirsty. He had to be hospitalized and given fluids repeatedly to bring the sodium levels back to normal.

Dr. West said Simon’s favorite perch in the hospital was on the sink next to the faucet. He knew that was where the water came from.

Finally, however, Simon’s sodium reached nearly normal levels and he could actually leave water in a bowl. At one point when Dr. West first tested him, Simon drank four bowls of water straight down and promptly threw up.

I had been corresponding with a very nice lady about Simon for several weeks. She wanted to adopt him and patiently waited for his foot to heal and for Dr. West to decide if he needed to have all his teeth pulled on top of all his other issues. Then when I told her he might have more complicated problems, she held her breath and waited.

And, thankfully, I had good news for Karen. Today, she was finally able to take Simon home. This sweet boy truly deserves a life of leisure and happiness after all the trauma he has witnessed in his short life. We offer up a toast to Simon’s turn of good luck. And we know that Simon will drink to that.

Simon and his new mom, Karen, off to celebrate Simon's turn of good luck.