What started in a bucket of industrial glue has ended in a permanent home.
Elmer, a four-month-old kitten found saturated in glue near an industrial area in Fort Worth, Texas, has been adopted by his foster carer, Leah Owens, after shelter staff at the Humane Society of North Texas spent hours trying to save him.
A passerby found Elmer in a bucket of glue and brought him to the shelter in mid-April.
“It was covering his head, his ears, his mouth, his nose. It was completely all over his body,” Misty Mendes, the rescue group’s director of shelter medicine, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
Staff feared the glue could harden around his chest or inside his mouth and nose and stop him from breathing.
When Elmer arrived, Mendes said staff did not know how to remove the glue.
“It was a first for everybody,” she said. “We were trying to use anything that we had.”
Dish soap, mineral oil and bandage removal spray did not work. Canola oil did.
Mendes said staff spent six hours that first night massaging Elmer with the oil, washing him in warm baths and syringe feeding him.
“He was shaking,” Mendes said. “I think he was probably very close to death because he didn’t fight. He didn’t meow, he didn’t hiss or growl. He was just very, very lethargic, but very tolerant.”
A staff member took Elmer home at the end of her shift to continue treating him overnight. The next morning, staff worked on him again for eight hours.
“He let us do what we needed to do,” Mendes said. “I think he got used to having a spa day and having people massage him constantly and so anytime, even after we got the glue off, he wanted that attention.”
Elmer was later fostered by Owens, 72, who said she quickly realised she wanted to keep him.
“We just fell in love with each other. I could tell he loved me, and I knew I loved him,” she said.
Owens said Elmer arrived after a hard period in her life. She lost her husband to multiple myeloma in October.
“I felt a void and just an emptiness in the house, you know?” she said. “I thought, yeah, he might kind of perk things up around here. And boy, has he ever.”
When Owens brought Elmer back to the Humane Society to be neutered, she learned the shelter had set up a special email account to deal with the hundreds of adoption applications he had received.
If she wanted to adopt him herself, she had to send one in too.
“I was kind of hesitant. I’m 72 years old and I thought I’ve got three cats in the house and, you know, he’s a little kitten,” she said. “And I got in the parking lot, and I sat there for a minute, and I said, ‘Nope, I’m going to.’ And I wrote the email out there in the parking lot.”
Owens said the attention around Elmer has been a lot, but she wants to use it to encourage people to foster animals.
“It helps these shelters and the rescues. They’re just in desperate need for fosters so they can bring in more animals, and it’s just very, very rewarding,” she said. “And adopt, don’t shop. There’s so many good animals out there.”
Elmer is now settling into his new home, where Owens says he is fearless, playful and affectionate, with a mischievous streak.
“He’ll crawl up in my lap and then he’ll get up on my chest, put his little paws on my face, such a sweet little kitty, and I’ll rub my chin on his head, and then he bites my chin,” she said with a chuckle. “Little stinker.”
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