Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/luna-phoebe/

Cats, just like people, deserve love and care despite their differences. Their fur color, perceived personalities, or disabilities should not keep them from being adopted into loving homes. Luckily, there are still some humans out there who thoroughly understand these animals’ plight and want to help.

Gemma, who lives in the UK with her partner and three cats, perhaps understands these creatures’ situation better than most. She has a few disabilities herself, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). She tires easily and uses a mobility scooter, leg and ankle braces, and other tools to help her get around. She knows what it feels like to be labeled as different and to need a little extra help.

Gemma also grew up on a farm in Scotland and says her dad nurtured her love for animals, especially the “underdogs.”

“He instilled kindness to animals in me from a very young age, and we always made sure that we safely rehoused cats that had been dumped with us. Even though my parents are definitely dog people,” Gemma remembers. “We had soft spots for particular cats who stayed and lived on the farm as mousers.”

When Gemma and her partner got together 16 years ago, she wanted to get cats, and he wanted dogs. By chance, they ended up with rescue hamsters and two house rabbits instead. Later, they got a cat, Esme, and then adopted a stray cat, Horace, who’d decided to “set up camp” under the cover of Gemma’s mobility scooter. Over the years, their hamsters and rabbits passed away, followed by Esme, who had FIP.

After Esme passed, the couple thought they might never get another cat again when Horace was gone, because losing their pets hurt them so terribly. But when they learned about two disabled black kittens who needed a home, they realized their hearts were open and willing to try again.

“It all happened very naturally, you know, and we weren’t sure if we were ever going to get another cat after Horace because it really hurt us, because me and my partner can’t have children. So our animals are our children, our fur babies. But yeah, it just naturally happened at the right time,” Gemma recalls.

The kittens, Luna and Astrid, were farm cats that had been born with cerebellar hypoplasia (CH), a neurological condition that often causes muscle weakness and limb floppiness, balance issues, head shaking, seizures, and limited mobility. Cats with this condition are sometimes referred to as “wobbly” due to the symptoms the disease causes.

The farmer who owned the kittens brought the pair to the vet to be put down, but the vet believed they could still have a good chance at life and decided to try to find them a home instead. The vet asked a local dog groomer if she knew someone who would take them, and she immediately thought of Gemma.

“So she got me out for a cup of coffee and showed me a picture of the two of them sitting in the straw on the farm,” says Gemma. “And I said yes, without even a second thought.”

Gemma and her partner began to research CH and learn how to take care of their new family members. It was October of 2020 when Luna and Astrid came to live with them.

“We started doing extra bottle feeding to get their weight up because there were very small. They could eat solid food. We just wanted to give them those additional extra nutrients,” she remembers.

Of course, it wasn’t always easy in the beginning, and not everyone has been supportive. Even the local vet that Gemma transferred them to was reluctant to care for them at first.

“The first thing they said to me was, ‘Ohh they are going to have no quality of life. You’d be better off putting them to sleep.’”

Happily, however, Gemma was no stranger to advocating for herself and her animals, and she stood up for them.

Luna soon began to thrive in her new home. She uses machine-washable potty pads instead of a litter box to use the bathroom, but she’s capable of doing it on her own. She is quiet, but Gemma says she’s also funny in her own way. She loves to lie in warm places, especially in sunbeams, and she adores cuddles and crinkly toys. Even though she has limited mobility, she still likes to bat toys around, as long as someone is willing to knock them back within her reach when they stray.

“If she wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to go to the litter box, she’ll paw at me. She’ll wake me up and go, ‘Mum, I need to go down to the litter box. So even though she’s really quiet, she’ll tell you what she wants, and if she doesn’t like something, ohh, you get stink face.”

Luna has a fairly severe form of CH and isn’t very mobile, but she knows how to get what she wants. Gemma tries to make up for the cat’s lack of mobility by taking her places in a special cat backpack. Luna’s also currently learning to use a wheelchair to get around (with encouragement), and she has the aid of some homemade ankle braces too, modeled after Gemma’s own ankle braces and formed to fit her feet perfectly, to combat the hypermobility in her front feet.

“I know what it’s like when I’m stuck in bed and when I’m not well, and, you know, being able to get her to stand up is good all around for her,” says Gemma.

Unfortunately, all the care in the world wasn’t enough for Astrid. She began having seizures shortly after she was born, and they slowly became more frequent and turned into “massive cluster seizures.” Her quality of life was waning, and she was getting tired. When the kitten was six months old, Gemma and her partner brought Astrid back to the vet to be put down.

“She was on the highest dose she could be on for her size of medication,” says Gemma. “It was the hardest decision me and my partner have ever had to make. But we gave her six months of joy and comfort, a safe place to live, and her and her sister would play all the time. That was six months that she almost didn’t have at all, and it just would have been cruel not to give her the final act of kindness.”

It took the couple a while to open their hearts back up again, but by September of 2022, they were ready for another cat and were looking for another one with CH like Luna. Gemma stumbled upon Meow Meow Rescue, and they had a tortoiseshell calico named Phoebe available. Phoebe was a cat with CH who’d been picked up on the streets of Dubai – where dumping cats and poisoning strays is very common – with her brother, who didn’t survive. Gemma came up with £300 for the adoption fee and fundraised another £300 to cover the cost of flying Phoebe to the UK.

Phoebe, the family quickly found out, perfectly balances Luna. “Luna is the very gentle, serene swan-type cat, and Phoebe is the absolutely frantic swan legs under the water. So they balance each other out absolutely beautifully. And I’m blessed to have them,” Gemma says.

Phoebe, who has a more mild form of CH, was not interested in having a space to herself to settle in and get used to her new life. She wanted to get out and interact with Horace and Luna right away. She wanted to make noise and explore. She climbed the stairs on her second day, which surprised the whole family, and she’s since proven that she’s capable of jumping up on the couch and other surfaces. Gemma even had to get her a cat tree, and it’s her favorite spot to watch the snow or the children walking to and from school. She also likes to play with toys and wrestle with Horace.

“She has the most beautiful little walk. She has very high stepping walk, and when she’s excited and she stops, she doesn’t stop her little bum,” Gemma says. “Her legs keep going, so it’s like the motor’s still running.”

Gemma’s cats have now become a bit Instagram famous, especially Luna.

“The day and hour Astrid and Luna came to the house, I started snapping pictures,” says Gemma, “And I put them up on my Instagram page, and I got a few comments from friends going, ‘Oh my God, this is going to become a cat account.’ And I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I just start a cat account?”

Gemma, whose partner sometimes calls her Kitty McWhiskerson, decided to use the McWhiskerson moniker as her cats’ last name on Instagram. She always writes from Luna’s perspective on her cat account and admits that her photos are not Insta-perfect; her real life is in the background, and the cats are not perfectly posed. But maybe that’s for the better.

“I think it’s what people like about the account,” she says. “That it’s not the same picture over and over and over again. There are a lot of cat Instagram accounts that are very posed and very glamorous. I take pictures of, you know, litter boxes and them lounging on the sofa, and nothing’s arty. I think a lot of people enjoy the little stories I put with the pictures that I put up.”

Gemma says that, even though she’s gotten some hate on the account, far more people have offered their love and support. She says it has been an overall “positive and life-affirming thing” and has created a community of people who own cats with disabilities.

“We’re not doing it for fame and fortune,” says Gemma. “We’re doing it because we love animals, and it just so happens that we’ve found a family of CH cat owners while doing it.”

Luna was even chosen to be featured by a UK subscription box, which contributed to her fame and means you can now buy merchandise with her photo on it.

Gemma hopes sharing her story will help others realize that cats with disabilities can have a good quality of life, even if it’s a little bit different than other cats’ lives.

“Just little adaptations, and you can give an animal with a disability a beautiful life.”

Gemma believes all cats are also Instagram-worthy, regardless of their abilities or coloring.

“It would be lovely to see more people adopting, and don’t be scared of a black cat,” she says. “They can be Instagram-worthy, trust me. I know a lot of people on Instagram think it’s really hard to take good photos of black cats. And I’m like, even if she looks like a black smudge, everybody knows it’s her.”

So if you’re thinking of adopting a pet, we hope that you’ll take the time to consider a new friend with black fur, a disability, or some other attribute that tend to make shelter pets less desirable to prospective adopters. Those animals deserve love just as much as all the others, and you might be surprised at how much they can change your life for the better in return!

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog