Simon the Survivor.

Simon is now safe and relaxing in foster care.

Everyone always tells me horror stories about animals; stories I don’t want to hear and that sometimes keep me awake at night worrying about stranded and abused cats and dogs.

But the story of Simon is one I had to hear and one I want to tell you even though it is difficult to know that things like this occur. The focus of this story is on the positive–one person stepped forward and saved one cat, Simon. And, although he is the lone survivor, we can rejoice in his life.

Here is Simon’s story.

Toward the end of January, I had an email from the Madison County Dog Warden, Gary Kronk. The email said that he needed help for a lady in a local trailer park and her 13 inside cats. The lady was going in a nursing home because of Alzheimer’s and there was no one to take care of the cats. Deputy Kronk needed a place for the cats to go and quickly. He was working with the attorney who was in charge of the lady’s case and she wanted the cats out of the trailer pronto.

Deputy Kronk tried to accommodate the lawyer, but she wanted a solution that day–something he could not do. The lawyer talked about hiring a “nuisance company” to come in and “take care” of the cats, something Deputy Kronk did not want to happen. He wanted to find them a home, even though they were not adoptable in the normal sense of the word.

Most of the cats were very shy. They had only been around the older woman and were not socialized to the point where they could be adopted. To most people they would have appeared to be feral. But, unlike most feral cats, they also had never been outside. They had always lived in a warm, safe environment. Therefore, they needed a barn home where they would be protected from the cold and conditions they had no experience with.

As you well remember, at the end of January into February, Ohio was hit with a ton of snow. Even animals used to living outside were having a hard time. Inside only cats certainly could not manage those extremities.

I could offer no solutions to Deputy Kronk. We had been looking for barn homes for several of our kitties with no luck. He was checking to see if there was any money in the woman’s estate to take care of the cats. We thought maybe we could, at least, get them fixed before they went anywhere else.

But we, and, sadly, the cats ran out of time.

Deputy Kronk had such a hard time working on this case that he finally pulled out because he was having problems trying to offer solutions that did not mean death to the cats.

But death is what they got.

Just about a week ago, one of our Board members, Carol, had a phone call from a vet office here in Plain City wondering if we could help with a Siamese kitty that came from a rotten situation. When Carol began describing the circumstances to me, I knew it was the same case Deputy Kronk had been working on with no success.

The Siamese cat, Carol told me, had come from a trailer after his human had to go to a nursing home. Carol had further details in the saga. It seems that the people in charge of the cats decided to just let them all outside as their way of solving the problem. When one of the neighbors saw beautiful, friendly Simon out in the cold, wading through the snow, he scooped him up and took him inside. The other cats were not so lucky. None survived the weather.

We, of course, offered to get vet care for Simon and help find him a home. It turned out that Simon was already ear-tipped and neutered, so possibly all of the cats had already been vetted and huge expenses used for their vet care–all for nothing.

After I took Simon to the vet, I spoke with the lady who was taking care of him and she gave me further gruesome details in Simon’s story.

It seems that the people went into the trailer, shooing out all the cats that would leave (and really, how many would have opted to run out into the cold and snow, vacating their warm home?). Those that did not go were locked inside to starve. After a few weeks, the people came back and removed the dead bodies.

I cried when I heard this. What a needless waste of life. What an awful way to die. The kinder choice would have been to humanely euthanize them, not allow them to suffer without food and water, wallowing in their own feces, among their dying feline friends.

I could only think of my own cats and fosters. Many of them are very shy. If you opened my front door, not many would run outside. They would, instead, hide from strangers. Under the same circumstances, my cats would also have been locked inside and starved to death.

And what would the poor woman with Alzheimer’s think if she knew the fate of her beloved cats? They were her only companions, their fuzzy faces the one constant in her life. She would not have wanted them to die or to suffer.

Conditions in the trailer after the woman left must have been bad, because poor Simon’s feet were encrusted with feces and cat litter after his rescue. His current protector told me that she started noticing bloody paw prints on her carpet from Simon’s raw feet. Simon, in his attempts to remove the hardened clumps on his pads, pulled away skin, as well.

Thankfully, Simon’s feet have now almost completely healed. He is also very, very thin. But he still loves people, still wants you to pet and hold him. He still trusts that humans will do the best they can for him. Because that is the way with animals. They always forgive.

Simon is a survivor. I only wish I had done more to produce that same fate for the others. I feel terribly guilty that I didn’t get more involved. I am working with Deputy Kronk to see if there are any charges that can be brought against the people who killed the cats. It is too little, too late, but I feel I must do something.

Someday, I hope to never again hear another animal horror story. And the only way to do that is to stop the people who cause these atrocities. I am positive that can happen.