Case of the Month

Linda Kehler has always loved Siamese cats since she had one as a child. Last year she would occasionally walk past a pet store, where she saw a Siamese cat that reminded her of this love. Linda went in to look at the kitty, but decided against buying her there since she seemed sketchy from being in the pet store too long. Still wanting to get a kitty in addition to the two yellow labs she had, Linda went online and discovered a Siamese cat for sale not too far away from her. When she visited, she saw that the three month old female kitten was living in an apartment with a lot of people and didn’t have good living conditions, so she paid for her and brought her home. Two weeks later, she got another Siamese cat, a male this time, so her cats could be good companions for one another. Linda has three adopted special needs children who love the Beatles, so when the time came to name the cats, their family settled on John and Yoko.

 The kittens settled in well. Linda and her family live in a house with a zero lot line, with not a lot of space between houses, so she tried to keep her cats close to home. At first Linda thought her cats would stay contained in her atrium, but they discovered how to climb the tree, get up onto the roof and out into the neighborhood. Since they discovered how to be foot-loose and fancy-free, Linda would let the cats out for a couple of hours every day. Both of the cats were doing great until one terrible day in November.

 “I had just gone to bed,” remembered Linda, “when my boyfriend called up to me that he heard a loud, weird noise, but he didn’t know what it was. A couple of minutes later, Yoko came into the house and was throwing up, which was unusual. She went back outside, but then we couldn’t find her. She didn’t come back in that night.”

The next morning, Linda discovered Yoko had retreated to a palm tree in her yard and saw that Yoko was doing very poorly. She immediately took her to their vets at the Airport-Irvine Animal Hospital where she discovered that Yoko had been shot with a high-powered pellet gun. A pellet had entered one side of her abodomen, passed through several coils of intestine, and almost exited the other side of her body. Although Linda had no proof, she believes that her neighbor shot her family’s beloved cat.

Distraught over the fact that someone would do something like this, Linda’s distress grew when she learned the cost of the surgery. It was beyond the reach of her finances.

“I felt horrible,” said Linda, “I thought I would have to put this kitten down because I would be faced with huge medical bills I just couldn’t afford. I couldn’t bear to think of how my kids, especially my middle son, would react. They’re all so attached to our cats. Then our vets told us they had resources available to me which would help me offset the cost, and I was so grateful.”

“Dr. Tara Haley was the veterinarian who thought of the Angel Fund,” says Dr. Shelby Coston. “The Angel Fund got back to us quickly so that we could get the surgery underway. Dr. Pang was in surgery for two hours and twenty minutes, and Yoko ended up recovering very well. With the Angel Fund’s assistance, we were able to save that cat’s life.”

 Not only was Yoko’s life saved, but the Angel Fund also helped save Linda Kehler’s children’s hearts. In a thank you letter to the Angel Fund, Linda wrote, “Please accept the sincerest appreciation from my entire family for your kind and generous