Roselia Sosa’s family went to Pima Animal Care Center to adopt a kitten.
They came home with two.
Toph had lost his eyes from an infection. Azula had been rescued from a hoarding situation and was extremely skittish. The pair were inseparable, and one guided the other. But not the one you might think.
“Since Toph is so friendly and cuddly with everyone, he kind of helps Azula,” Sosa said.
“We liked Azula, the gray cat very, very much, but she was bonded with Toph, the black cat. That’s how we ended up bringing them both home,” she said. “Toph was really really friendly. He was looking for so much attention.”
Toph and Azula were two of the hundreds of kittens who found their way to PACC last summer. “We often take in more than a dozen mewling, orphaned kittens every single day” during that seasonal peak, said Karen Hollish, PACC’s development director.
Toph arrived as a palm-sized, weeks-old stray. “His eyes were completely crusted shut from a painful herpes virus,” Hollish said.
“Two years ago, we would never have had the staff or supplies during the height of kitten season to save an extremely sick baby animal like Toph,” she said. Donations from the community have helped boost the shelter’s medical care.
PACC’s veterinary team started treating Toph with donated eye drops and gave him antibiotics to cure his upper-respiratory infection — it’s like a kitty cold, she said.
After six weeks of care, Toph’s cold was gone, but his eyes had still not improved, and the medical staff felt they had no option except to remove them, Hollish said.
After Toph recovered from his surgery, PACC volunteers paired him with Azula, a young kitten who’d been rescued from an apartment filled with a dozen cats.
In their new home, the cats stay strictly indoors.
Azula loves cuddling with the kids and is a bit timid with adults, Sosa said. Toph is the more adventurous, jumping onto the couch within a week.
