To honor Pansy and her amazing will to live, BrightHaven has established The Pansy Fund. Please donate so that in future we can help more cats like Pansy. It will save lives!
Donations to The Pansy Fund help directly with
- Veterinary costs that will save an animal from euthanasia in the shelter system
- Emergency veterinary costs for BrightHaven Animals
- Emergency medical care for BrightHaven foster animals
Pansy’s Story
Pansy started off life as nobody’s cat, born in a yard in Richmond, fed occasionally by people who lived in the apartment complex, but with no one to really look after her. And then something awful happened. Someone or something attacked Pansy and shattered her face.
A BrightHaven volunteer, who rented a house from the same woman who owned the apartment complex, found out about Pansy. The call came in late on a Saturday evening. At this point Pansy had been outside injured for five days. She was so shy she could not be approached, so the apartment owner finally trapped her and brought her to the BrightHaven volunteer. Watching her try to eat with a shattered face was truly heart-wrenching. In spite of everything, this girl WAS trying to eat. She wanted to live. All we could do was send her to one of our vets to find out if anything could be done.
Pansy was in Dr. Chahal’s office the next morning. She was badly injured, her jaw shattered, weighing in at four pounds, emaciated and dehydrated. Dr. Chahal thought she had most likely been hit by a baseball bat.
BrightHaven doesn’t have money in the bank just waiting for situations like this; we just have to go on faith by getting started on credit and beginning a fund raising drive for donations. So that’s what we did. We told Dr. Chahal to do what was needed to save this little girl and we started asking for help to pay the bill. Pansy’s vet care cost $2,300. She lost half her jaw, her lips, and a lot of teeth. She spent a couple of days in intensive care on an IV before she was even strong enough for surgery. When she finally left the hospital she had an esophageal feeding tube in place and her feet were all bandaged up to keep her from pulling out her stitches.
Pansy needed a month of cage rest while she healed. She was back and forth to the vet that month – readjusting stitches, removing the feeding tube, removing the wire from her jaw. She was on several different antibiotics to fight the nasty infection that had settled in during the days before she got help. But Pansy’s a survivor. This little girl had a serious will to live.
Pansy showed that will to live the moment she got to her foster home. She put that poor little mangled mouth to work on a plate of cat food. And then another plate, and another. (The feeding tube came out on her next vet visit. No need for that cumbersome thing.) Pansy just kept on eating. When the bandages came off we discovered pretty little white paws. And she purred and kneaded those paws in happiness and contentment. Pansy knew she was being helped and she worked with us on getting her better by scarfing down every plate of food set in front of her, even food with antibiotics tucked in. We kept passing the hat, asking for donations to pay Pansy’s bill, and you wonderful, generous-hearted folks came through.
A month later, all the stitches were out, the wire was out of her jaw, and Pansy was free to leave the cage and check out her foster home. She was up to 5 pounds at that point. 
Now, several months later, Pansy is bouncing around her foster home. She weighs more than 6 pounds. Her coat is thick and glossy. She can eat anything and everything, soft food or hard. She can carry toy mousies in her mouth and wrestle and play with other kitties. Everything works and she’s ADORABLE, a little tuxedo girl with white paws and the longest white whisker eyelashes ever.
Pansy is great with other cats. She’s very playful and other cats seem drawn to her. She really loves toys, which she never had before. She is also very adventurous and loves to climb. We’ve been hoping to get a photo of her standing on something trying to remove the holiday garland from the curtain rods, but no luck yet.
She’s a very smart little girl. She watches the other cats and has learned how to be an indoor kitty from them. We love her dearly and feel so blessed to have her safe with us. She’s still shy with people she doesn’t know but that will pass in time. Our timid little girl actually let the vet techs and her original rescuer hold and cuddle her at her last vet visit and she seemed to enjoy all the admiration she was getting! Eventually Pansy will leave foster care for a home of her own. It’s just a matter of time.
We receive emergency calls like the call about Pansy all the time. And every time we have to think about the money. Sometimes we just can’t afford to take on a situation. Pansy’s one of the lucky ones. Pansy is a miracle. We want more miracles like Pansy. But we need your help. We need a fund with money set aside just for situations like this.
** A special thanks to Dr. Chahal at Ace Veterinary Hospital in Fremont for all his wonderful work and care and talent. When Pansy first arrived at his office battered and afraid, he got down on the floor on his knees and coaxed her out of the carrier. She went right to him and he took it from there. He trusted us to gather the money and he did everything necessary to save that little girl. ***
