We don’t know exactly what happened — maybe she ate something toxic, maybe she got into a fight we never saw, or maybe her kidneys just decided to rebel one night. All we know is that last week she went from purring on the windowsill to crashing hard, barely able to lift her head. The emergency vets ran tests, stabilized her, and started fluids and meds around the clock. They say she’s responding, slowly, but it’s going to take time — and a lot more care.

The costs have piled up faster than we could keep track:

• Emergency admission & diagnostics
• Ongoing IV fluids & hospitalization
• Daily medications to support her organs
• Bloodwork checks every few days
• Special recovery diet & any follow-up treatments

We’re talking several thousand dollars already, with more to come until she’s strong enough to come home full-time. We’re just regular folks who adopted this stray kitten three years ago because she chose us — we never imagined we’d be facing a medical crisis like this.

But Shadow… even now, when we visit, she tries to flick her tail a little. Her whiskers still twitch when she hears our voices. She’s fighting with everything she has left, trusting us to get her through.

If you’ve got even a little to spare — $5, $10, anything — it would help cover the next round of fluids, the meds that are keeping her stable, the monitoring she desperately needs. No pressure, no guilt, just gratitude if you can help or even share her story.

Shadow deserves to curl up in sunbeams again, to bat at strings, to be the mischievous shadow she was named for.

Thank you for reading about her.