Fudge really shouldn’t even have been alive. A stray, found in Marysville, he weighed 4.3
pounds, perfect for a four-month old kitten.
But he was a mess with a runny nose, and infected and scabby eyes. Placed in foster care, he got the medications he needed, as well as three meals a day. He never completely cleared the upper respiratory issues, but he was well enough to be vaccinated, tested, and dewormed.
When he got neutered, however, the rescue got a big surprise. He was a 14-month-old cat, not a kitten, and he had a hole in his upper mouth, called a cleft palette. It was a particularly difficult one, since it was in the soft tissue far back in his mouth, something impossible to see until he was under anesthesia.
Now we knew why all the antibiotics he’d received hadn’t cured his runny nose.
Cats with cleft palettes don’t usually live very long without medical care. The opening allows
food to go up into their nose, and down into all the wrong places, so without medical care to
close the opening they die quickly.
How Fudge made it as long as he did, is a mystery. His will to live was strong.
Treating a soft cleft palette is very difficult. The location and lack of skin available to close the
hole make this surgery very challenging. In fact, the first three surgeries failed. Each only lasted
a few days before the hole opened back up.
Meantime, Fudge needed to be fed with a surgically-implanted feeding tube, and he needed a special liquid formula given every six hours.
His amazing foster got up at 2 am every morning for four + months to make sure he got the
nutrition he needed to continue growing.
Finally we found Dr. Sadanaga, a soft tissue specialist in Malvern, who successfully created a
flap that covered the hole. It held, but had a tiny little opening that needed yet another surgery.
Poor Fudge had to be caged for some weeks after the surgery so he couldn’t jump or jar the
repair in any way. It wasn’t fun, but after almost seven months his cleft palette is finally healed.
This kitty had quite the will to live, and now he has the chance to do just that.