Brain Surgery for Princess from Timaru

Princess is a small domestic shorthair cat that was found at Jack's Point, Timaru in June 2020 and was brought to us at Timaru's Family Vet where she was determined to be approximately 6 months old, 645gm bodyweight and starving. It became apparent that Princess was visually impaired, struggling to judge distances and unable to jump up any great height. Princess became very attached to another stray kitten we had at the clinic who we named Pearl.

It became clear that Princess and Pearl were best friends and needed to stay together. Because of this love for each other and our love for them, we decided to keep them as our clinic kittens - often referred to as "the girls".

Princess started having seizures late in November 2020. These whole body seizures were very violent and dramatic. During these seizures Pearl would often run to Princess and be very close for the duration of the seizure then comforted her as she regained consciousness.

The seizures became more frequent and she had four seizures in one week in mid December. Due to our knowledge that seizures in cats are rare and usually trauma related we decided to have a MRI scan done on Princess's brain. This showed that Princess has a large cyst in the left side of her brain. This is likely to be something that she has been born with and is becoming larger with time, putting more and more pressure on her brain.

We have done research and found that there is a specialist surgeon in Auckland that can help Princess. This comes with a hefty cost of $10,000 - $15,000, plus the cost of getting her to Auckland.