In early 2017, Elaine Seamans, founder of the At-Choo Foundation, was walking through a shelter in Los Angeles. As Seamans passed through the cat section, she saw a sad, scared cat with a terrible case of sarcoptic mange. The mange was so bad, the cat couldn’t even open his eyes.
When the cat saw Seamans looking at him, he let out a tiny meow. Seamans quickly realized that the little sound was a cry for help.
Seamans asked the shelter staff if she could hold the cat. Even though mange can be passed from cats to humans, Seamans didn’t care —she needed to show the poor cat that he was loved. Seamans knew she had to get the cat out of the crowded shelter, and so she called up her friend Toby Wisneski, the founder of Leave No Paws Behind.
“When I was talking to Elaine on the phone and she let me hear his little meow, I said, ‘That’s it,'” Wisneski told The Dodo. “I could hear him. That sealed the deal.”
Wisneski picked the cat up on Valentine’s Day weekend, and because of that, she decided to name him Valentino. She brought Valentino over to a veterinarian to get his mange checked out. The veterinarian gave the cat medicine to treat his illness.
Valentino stayed at the veterinarian’s office for a few days, getting treatment for his mange. To show his gratitude, the cat purred and tried to rub up against the veterinary staff.
Soon, Valentino was finally able to open his eyes and look at the world around him.
Once he was released from the veterinarian’s office, Valentino stayed with Wisneski for a month, recovering from his mange and regaining his strength. By the end of March 2107, he was well enough to go to a foster home. Wisneski found the perfect foster mom for him: Tania Mejivar, a cat lover who had seen a video of Valentino on Facebook and fell in love with him.
Mejivar brought Valentino home with her, and the two instantly clicked. Five weeks later, Mejivar officially adopted Valentino.
A year after his rescue, Valentino is doing wonderfully!
“He’s spoiled rotten, and a little chubby,” Menjivar told The Dodo. “He wakes me up at 6 in the morning for food — we snuggle for about a half hour and then I feed him … He loves it.”
In just a year, Valentino has undergone an amazing transformation. He went from a scared and sick cat crying in a cage to a happy, healthy animal in a loving home. Valentino has a great life ahead of him!
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