When Tyler Kloefkorn and his wife, Lindsay Guzman, met Walter the cat, it was love at first sight.
“He was the cutest kitten — he had the most handsome coat and his ears were way too big for his face,” Kloefkorn said. It didn’t matter to them that he had only three legs.
The tiny kitten had come to the Pima Animal Care Center as a stray with a badly injured leg in late July. An abscessed puncture wound had turned into a massive infection.
PACC veterinarian Sarah Rios immediately gave Walter a dose of Convenia, an expensive but effective long-acting injectable antibiotic that was donated by the Friends of PACC, said Karen Hollish, PACC’s development director.
They tried to save the leg, but the infection had been neglected for too long and so they had to amputate, she said. Walter recovered in a foster home until he was ready for adoption.
Losing a leg hasn’t seemed to slow Walter — now known as Wally — a bit.
The young cat has many hobbies and talents, his adoptive parents say. He routinely empties soil from pots, hides all sorts of things, and encloses himself in small places.
“Wally is great at holding conversations; we talk with him and he meows right back,” Kloefkorn wrote as part of PACC’s efforts to bring attention to some of 2015’s harder rescues.
“When he finds one of us, he loves to snuggle — we say that he is an aggressive snuggler.”
The couple say they often forget that Wally is missing a hind leg. “Wally loves to race up and down stairs,” Kloefkorn said. “We notice his missing leg only when he tries to scratch his ears. It’s a little heartbreaking to see him move what remains of his leg and not reach anything, but of course we are happy to satisfy any scratches that he needs.”
The couple says they can not thank everyone involved in his rescue enough.
“We couldn’t ask for a better companion,” Kloefkorn said. “He is the perfect therapy for recovering from a stressful day. We are so thankful that Wally was given a second chance in life, and that he found his way to our family.”
