Meet Fritz, the Special Needs Egyptian Mau

While our usual rescue radius stretches across London and Kent, in the case of one particular cat we extended it a little further - all the way to the North East corner of Africa, to be precise.

You may recall a few weeks back our decision to fly Fritz, a 2 year old special needs cat from Cairo, Egypt, to our sanctuary in the UK. Already suffering the misfortune of being born among Egypt's vast stray cat population, Fritz had even less chance than most at survival; he possessed a rare and potentially dangerous deformity - a cleft palate. This is a hole in the roof of the mouth that could give food and water fatal passage into the lungs.

Fritz had all the odds in the world stacked against him and yet, somehow, with the combined efforts of wonderful people in both Egypt and England alike, he made it. He was rescued from the streets and nursed back to health, his condition diagnosed. CatCuddles arranged his passage to our sanctuary with the express intention of getting his defect surgically repaired, something he had no prospect of in Egypt.

Now, several weeks after his arrival, things have taken an unexpected turn; consultations with English vets suggest that the surgery we were determined to get Fritz may not be so necessary after all. Currently, he is being given food and water via a special apparatus that minimizes discomfort and the risk to his health; his surgery carries no guarantee of success and some danger of creating the need for further operations or even widening the gap in his mouth. We now face a very difficult question - do the benefits of surgery - a completely normal life - outweigh the stress and possible complications it could bring? Only further consultations with soft-tissue specialists will tell. One thing is for certain, if surgery is chosen as the best course of action, a massive fundraising effort will need to be undertaken to raise the money for this complex treatment.

In the meantime, Fritz is happy and comfortable in foster care, minus a few bouts of sneezing caused by his condition. He is noisy, eccentric, overflowing with energy and quite possibly the friendliest cat you will ever meet. He has found a firm friend in the form of a Jack Russell Terrier, who has grown used to being sneezed on occasionally. His future - whether it holds surgery or not - will have a lot of love in it.