Dot Louw, Bloubergrand
For approximately two years we have had a “gypsy cat” that has been abandoned by someone and therefore some of the neighbours feed him.
At first he was very skinny and scared but soon we all fattened him up.
He used to sneak into houses and steal food and find odd places to sleep at night, which in winter was very worrying. So we started to check up on his whereabouts on our chat group.
Two weeks ago, he arrived at my house for breakfast but refused to eat anything and really didn’t look well, the same thing the following day, so I managed to inspect him and noticed that his mouth was dribbling.
As he allows me to dry him off when he is wet and even pat him, I picked him up and took him to a local vet.
It turned out that he had an ulcer on his tongue and had to be hospitalised overnight and put on a drip as well as antibiotics etc.
And of course had to be looked after for a while, so I landed up keeping him in my spare room to give him his medication.
I have three cats of my own so I was “the chosen one”.
The vet account came to a horrendous R1 586, which I cannot afford, so I asked the neighbours if anyone would chip in to pay the account, and, amazingly, we raised R1 500. Thank you to the seven neighbours who contributed to save our gypsy cat that we all named Sokkies because of his white feet.
I didn’t know people like this still exist.