The Story Of Snow

I’ve been following the story of Snow for many months now, checking in on him as many of my friends check in on Sealy’s progress. With Christmas just around the corner, I felt it time to now tell his amazing story.

The Story of Snow. Collage by Elisa

Snow was a victim of the most horrible abuse imaginable. He was found back in April in the area of 15 Mile and Moravian in Sterling Heights, Michigan. A young couple found him in their backyard and contacted Paws For The Cause Feral Cat Rescue on April 5. Snow was starving and scared and refused to be caught.

He was eventually caught in a live trap and rushed to the vet. The vets treating Snow believe his paws were tied together with a rope, then a corrosive chemical (most likely acid) was poured on him. This left Snow with a lot of dead flesh hanging from his neck.

Paws For The Cause Feral Cat Rescue posted several photos of Snow to a Facebook page set up in his honor. Donations started pouring in as far away as far away as Germany, Israel and Norway, along with hundreds of emails wishing him well. Those caring for this poor abused cat never gave up on Snow.

Unfortunately, Snow is FIV+ and that complicated the task ahead of getting him healed. Snow was put on antibiotics, steroids and Silvadene topical cream also had to be applied throughout the day. The Silvadene is standard for human burn victims. His eyes don’t fully close due to the scar tissue and tightness of the skin in that area. Not only did he have the head injury, where several skin grafts were necessary for him to heal, Snow also limped. According to Laura Wilhelm-Bruzek, who is with the rescue taking care of Snow, his paws were tied together to keep him from fighting while the acid was poured on him.

Snows showed a love of humans from the very beginning. Even with this unbelievable injury, Snow still purred and begged for attention.

Snow’s story has been featured on the local Channel 7 WXYZ news, the Macomb Daily and the Sterling Heights Sentry. Several freelance writers have also told his story.

For those of you who would like to send Snow a Christmas present, he has a wish list on Amazon.com.

We also need to thank Paws For The Cause Feral Cat Rescue for working so hard to save Snow. This organization does a lot of TNR work with feral colonies in southeast Michigan.

As you can see from the photos, Snow has healed beautifully. I know the images of his injury are very graphic, but I felt them necessary to show how much progress this sweet kitty has made. All images were taken from his Facebook page. That’s his human servant holding him. I believe Snow has her well trained now.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the story of this tough little cat, who is now living a normal life where he chases his own shadow. I love happy endings!

Elisa

Please comment here using either Facebook or WordPress (when available).

Forgiveness is only possible if a person says they are sorry. It is impossible to forgive an unrepentant person. Even God can’t do it, so how can we? The monsters that did this won’t ever feel bad that they did it because they can’t. We have all these kids running around that somehow don’t have empathy for others– not for humans, not for other living creatures. They are literally monsters, and they are psychologically damaged. I don’t hold out much hope for them. Once in awhile a monster like that actually repents, but it’s only ever after they’ve been caught, so you wonder how genuine the repentance is. I do believe that they will pay a very high price for what they’ve done and they will pay it eternally. Society should have the death penalty for people that do something this horrible, because they really don’t have any hope of being rehabilitated. It is not in our interest to have them around, so let God deal with them. The fear of death might be the only thing that would turn them around and maybe in the end save their souls, but as far as their physical existence on this earth it should be ended by us. We don’t have the stomach to do that, but if we did you’d get a lot less of this kind of behavior. Someone who does this should forfeit his right to walk among us. The sad thing is, we won’t even put them in prison for life, much less execute them. If they ever get caught they’ll get a slap on the wrist because it was just an animal. Only after they progress to killing humans do we do anything. How is that acceptable? We could honestly save innocent human life if we did the right thing in these horrific cases, when we are able to catch the perpetrators. I’d be satisfied with life in prison, but I’d have no problem with executing them. There are worse things than death– like an eternity in hell. People who do this kind of thing have a very, very slim chance of escaping the latter. Their best hope is to be punished very, very severely for this. Nothing short of that is going to get through to them. But society just doesn’t see it that way. If someone is so cruel they must be sick. But someone can be sick and bad, and sometimes the best way to help is actually to punish somebody in a manner commensurate with what they did. It provides justice for his poor victims and sends the right message to that individual– the only true message: “You are a monster, and because of that something really bad is going to happen to you.” When I was studying to become a teacher, I was taught that in the classroom “what you permit you promote.” Permit disrespect and bad behavior and see more and more of it. We are permitting this kind of thing when we barely punish those who commit these horrible acts. And what do you know? As Marc points out, we are getting more and more of it.

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Comments

The Story Of Snow — 10 Comments

keenpetite on December 24, 2012 at 4:37 am said:
It’s so tragic & sad how some humans mistreat animals just for kicks. Late 1970 my husband was sent to check an abandoned house, turned out that “house” was being used by drunks/junkies; a male cat lived there in deplorable conditions broken nose, missing fur & a strange way of walking.
As animal lovers that we are, Frank made the effort with help from Police Dept to catch this cat & get him immediate medical help, cat was caught & place in humane cage (our young son nickname the cat Tramp)whenever one of us would get close to his cage Tramp would loudly purr. Few days later we took him to vet but sadly due to severe injuries/eye infection from abuse by those monsters Tramp had to be euthanized.
At least Tramp got love from humans the last days of his life.
keenpetite
Southeast Arizona (USA)
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Michael on December 15, 2012 at 6:58 am said:
Not enough time and commitment is provided by law enforcement agencies with respect to animal cruelty. Animal cruelty is very much a second tier problem, almost ignored most of the time. Law enforcement officers often don’t place too much value on animal life.
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Michael on December 15, 2012 at 6:46 am said:
It is evil to do what this person did. Perhaps the person had evil perpetrated upon him/her. However, the person or persons who did this are probably normal looking neighborhood kids or something like that, going to school and well behaved, which leads me to believe that we all have the potential to do evil things. It is a human trait.
One of the nice cat traits is to get on with life and make do. Snow is still very friendly and trusting of people.
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mayen alcebar on December 15, 2012 at 6:22 am said:
This is pure evil. How could anyone perform such act and probably felt a sick satisfaction/high while doing it. Learning things like this more than angers me and it makes me entertain thoughts of doing the same thing to that monster. What’s even more infuriating and frightening is knowing that the culprit is still out there and possibly has had more victims. Thankfully Snow’s story has a happy ending. I agree there should be stiffer, way stiffer, punishment for crimes against animals. But what really upsets me most is that there cats that are easily lured and taken advantage of because of their friendliness and trusting nature and once they are at the monster’s lair torturous things are done to them. When I was living with my aunt in the states she had a super friendly and playful collared Siamese mix named Thor who was 3 y/o @ the time of this incident. Thor would gallivant around the ‘nice’ neighborhood from mid morning and would come back in the afternoon. One day he came back later than usual with his right thigh stabbed with a small knife, the vet said probably a camping knife. Well, he swiftly recovered from his injury and psychologically but we never found out who his attacker was. Thor was probably lured to a desired area then his attacker just went for it.
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- Marc on December 15, 2012 at 6:26 am said:
  That’s very sad and difficult – I’m sorry you had to personally experience this kind of nastiness. It would scare the life out of me if it happened in my neighbourhood and I would move immediately if at all possible.
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Ruth (Monty's Mom) on December 15, 2012 at 12:21 am said:
The solution is to treat torturing animals as “doing something”– something bad enough to merit some really stiff punishments. Until there are real penalties for animal cruelty nothing will change. We need to admit that people who do this to an animal will do it to a human if they think they can get away with it. When people commit crimes and get away with it or are just given a slap on the wrist, they are emboldened to commit worse crimes. Our criminal justice system sends the exact wrong message with its weak enforcement of animal cruelty laws.
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Elisa on December 14, 2012 at 11:28 pm said:
You can know in your heart a person is going to grow into a monster, but what can you do? The police can’t do anything until a crime against a human is committed. Animal cruelty is small fines and no jail time. And is you see a future psychopath in someone you know you can’t tell their parents because they’re going to defend their child. You can’t tell the police because they haven’t done anything. You can’t tell their school because they haven’t done anything illegal. They’ve probably been in lots of classroom trouble but that’s not going to score the person anything other than after school detention.
Just look at the person who went in that Connecticutt school today and killed all those children. Someone out there saw the monster in him. But what can you do?
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Ruth (Monty's Mom) on December 14, 2012 at 10:52 pm said:
Forgiveness is only possible if a person says they are sorry. It is impossible to forgive an unrepentant person. Even God can’t do it, so how can we? The monsters that did this won’t ever feel bad that they did it because they can’t. We have all these kids running around that somehow don’t have empathy for others– not for humans, not for other living creatures. They are literally monsters, and they are psychologically damaged. I don’t hold out much hope for them. Once in awhile a monster like that actually repents, but it’s only ever after they’ve been caught, so you wonder how genuine the repentance is. I do believe that they will pay a very high price for what they’ve done and they will pay it eternally. Society should have the death penalty for people that do something this horrible, because they really don’t have any hope of being rehabilitated. It is not in our interest to have them around, so let God deal with them. The fear of death might be the only thing that would turn them around and maybe in the end save their souls, but as far as their physical existence on this earth it should be ended by us. We don’t have the stomach to do that, but if we did you’d get a lot less of this kind of behavior. Someone who does this should forfeit his right to walk among us. The sad thing is, we won’t even put them in prison for life, much less execute them. If they ever get caught they’ll get a slap on the wrist because it was just an animal. Only after they progress to killing humans do we do anything. How is that acceptable? We could honestly save innocent human life if we did the right thing in these horrific cases, when we are able to catch the perpetrators. I’d be satisfied with life in prison, but I’d have no problem with executing them. There are worse things than death– like an eternity in hell. People who do this kind of thing have a very, very slim chance of escaping the latter. Their best hope is to be punished very, very severely for this. Nothing short of that is going to get through to them. But society just doesn’t see it that way. If someone is so cruel they must be sick. But someone can be sick and bad, and sometimes the best way to help is actually to punish somebody in a manner commensurate with what they did. It provides justice for his poor victims and sends the right message to that individual– the only true message: “You are a monster, and because of that something really bad is going to happen to you.” When I was studying to become a teacher, I was taught that in the classroom “what you permit you promote.” Permit disrespect and bad behavior and see more and more of it. We are permitting this kind of thing when we barely punish those who commit these horrible acts. And what do you know? As Marc points out, we are getting more and more of it.
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- Michael on December 15, 2012 at 6:53 am said:
  Well said. I think the world has become less disciplined. It is probably political correctness and arrogance. People need training and to learn discipline if they are to behave properly in society and contribute positively to society. Self-discipline and morals needs to be instilled in young people. It sets them up for a productive life. Obviously a lot of modern parents are failing their children. I surprises me how poor parenting still is after all this time.
  I don’t think a bit of corporal punishment is a bad thing when training kids but the modern thinking is not to hit a child as part of a learning process.
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Marc on December 14, 2012 at 9:34 pm said:
That is another typically heartbreaking story – luckily with a happy ending. This sort of abuse seems to happen so much. I read about this kind of thing every week. Usually a cat is found or turns up at a shelter somewhere in america with heartbreaking and devastating injuries created by torture. I think its usually teenagers or younger kids and I think it is the result of sheltered/isolated upbringing and communities and a very very bad education system. I would love to torture the kids to be honest just to teach them a lesson they wont ever ever forget. I dont believe in forgiveness for that no matter how young they are.
Poor little Snow. What a relief he is ok. One day an animal activist is going to lose it and start doing the work the police don’t to find these kids and will start picking them off. That’s one use of a .22 I don’t have a problem with. If adults in certain areas can’t even teach children to be human then something has to give, someone has to lose it – the system has to fall apart because that sort of thing can’t go on in a healthy society. Those kids will just destroy people’s live afterwards.
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