Cody Duty
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
american-statesman After Dawn Shepherd learned that a stray cat she named Noble needed surgery to enable him to keep his eyesight, she contacted a nonprofit that helped her raise money for the procedure.
PHILANTHROPY
Donors act fast to help cat with no eyelids
Woman raises money through Internet in two days for surgery.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, July 27, 2009
The first thing Dawn Shepherd noticed was the loud yowling coming from the live trap she had set outside an abandoned house in Taylor one June night.
When she looked inside the cage she saw a brown tabby with a strange expression on its face. "He looked like he had been bitten by a snake because he was squinting and his cheeks were really big," she said.
Shepherd took the cat to the Austin Humane Society to get it neutered and got a far worse diagnosis. The 2-year-old cat was missing big sections of its eyelids. It couldn't blink or produce any natural lubrication to clear its eyes. Without surgery it would eventually go blind.
Shepherd, a bookkeeper for the Central Texas Cat Hospital in Round Rock, said she started crying when she heard the diagnosis and immediately called Sheila Smith, founder of a nonprofit group called Shadow Cats, which provides care for feral and stray cats.
Smith, who co-owns Central Texas Cat Hospital with her husband, Dr. Roy Smith, sent out a plea in the first part of July through her nonprofit group's Web site and through Craigslist for donations to pay for the surgery needed to repair the eyelids of the cat Shepherd named "Noble."
In two days she received the needed $2,000, including $1,400 from an anonymous person who said the donation came from "Nunya," meaning "none of your business," Smith said.
Other donors included David Murphy, a retired cable television accountant. He said he watches his budget carefully but was moved by the cat's plight.
"You just never get a chance to do something like save a cat from going blind," he said. "Most of the appeals you see are after the fact that something terrible has happened."
Donna du Bois, a chaplain for Texas Home Health Care Hospice, said she contributed because she has seen cases in which cats provided comfort for elderly patients who had no other friends in their lives.
"Cats can't go out and take care of themselves, and this cat is in pain," she said.
Noble was probably born without big sections of his eyelids, said Roy Smith. "It's very rare, and I've only seen 10 cases in my 48 years as a veterinarian."
The surgery will take the small pieces of the cat's remnant eyelids in the corners of his eyes and stretch them so that they cover most of the eyes, Smith said. Noble is scheduled for his first consultation today with a San Antonio surgeon.
Noble never would have been a candidate for the unusual surgery except for the fact that he appears to have been someone's pet, said Shepherd. She cuddled him on her lap Friday at the cat hospital as Noble squinted up at the ceiling lights.
She figured he probably survived by hiding in the abandoned house where he was trapped during the day and coming out at night to eat food left out for feral cats.
"He's very sweet, and he likes string cheese," Shepherd said.
cosborn@statesman.com; 445-3871
