STAR PRAIRIE, Wis. — Rue has tiny pink casts on her legs and wears a feeding tube in a bandana around her neck. But the staff caring for her at Home for Life Animal Sanctuary says she’s come a long way.
“She’s alert. She’s eating on her own and she’s doing great,” says Heidi Pulaski, a staff member who is fostering Rue while she recovers from a fall that nearly took her lie.
The animal sanctuary says they received Rue in late June after reports she’d been thrown from a twelfth story balcony at a Minneapolis apartment building.
Stacy Harris was at the apartment building the day it happened and saw the cat falling to the ground.
“It hit the concrete,” she said. “My heart is still beating just talking about the story because it was a cat, an animal.”
Harris said her neighbor called Minneapolis Animal Care and Control who took the clearly injured cat away.
Heidi says the Minneapolis Animal Control called several rescues trying to find someone to take the cat but because her medical needs were so great and the costs were so high, no one could.
“It came down to crunch time, a couple hours before she was to be euthanized and we stepped in and said that we would take her,” Heidi told KARE 11.
When the cat – who they called Rue – came to them she had a broken leg, toe and jaw. She was in a lot of pain. But soon after, Heidi says, she began to purr and wanted to be held.
“It was just amazing to me that an animal who had been through that so recently was going to trust a human again,” she said.
Since, Rue’s legs have been set in splints and she underwent a dental procedure that holds her mouth open so she can eat as her jaw heals. The care cost several thousand dollars.
Home For Life decided to publicize Rue’s story in hope of getting some justice for the cat. No one has been arrested for throwing her from the balcony.
“Our hearts break every day for the stories that we hear and Rue in particular,” Heidi says.
As for the future, Heidi says Rue may one day be adopted. If she’s not she will continue to live at Home For Life with the 100 or so other cats rescued.
“We give them the best life we can here and that’s what we would do for Rue if she stayed here as well.”
The cost of caring for Rue and the other animals including medical procedures is funded completely by donations.
To help contribute, you can donate at Home For Life’s website:
https://www.homeforlife.org/donate
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