Lazarus' Story
Lazarus
Lazarus is one of seventy five cats removed from a single trailer in January 2020. What started as a request from a local rescue friend to help an elderly home owner with an excess of cats quickly exploded into the largest scale rescue event we have ever undertaken at Murci’s Mission. In the end, the infamous Springdale Tails hoard took nearly four months of temporary crisis housing and over $13,000 to shelter, treat, vaccinate, deworm, and FIV/FeLv test all seventy five cats. This is a feat that should have absolutely been handled in conjunction with a county funded organization such as animal control or the local sheriff’s department, but in rural counties that do not allocate funding or promote legislation for the protection of animals, crisis situations such as the Springdale Tails go unaddressed without the manpower of individual privately funded organizations like Murci’s Mission.
On January 21st, 2020, we loaded up the Mission van with a few crates and headed out to Springdale, WA to meet the property owner and assess the level of need at the Springdale Tails ground zero. I am familiar with animal hoarding situations, and felt well equipped to handle the emotional and physical work needed to address this property, but what we saw would both literally and figuratively take the breath away from even the most experienced animal rescuer.
As we entered the home, we struggled to breathe and our eyes burned. We navigated floors layered with feces and a number of deceased animals. We began the grueling process of selecting which cats were in the greatest distress so we could take them into the vet immediately, one of which was Lazarus.
Our initial eight intakes were all emaciated, dehydrated, riddled with parasites and in overall poor condition, so they received fluids and antiparasitic treatments, and we brought them home to begin refeeding and fluid therapy. When I returned home from work the following day, Lazarus lay motionless, cold and stiff in his kennel. My heart dropped and I rushed to him, opened his cage door and felt crushed by sadness as I began to remove his body from his kennel.
And then I saw him gasp for breath ever so softly.
My heart was racing just as fast as his was slowing down, but he wasn’t gone yet, and he was way too close to the good life to give up yet. I sprinted with him to the car and without any further preparation, we flew down the highway towards the ER, and on the whole drive down I was steering with one hand and giving chest compressions with the other. My spouse called the hospital to tell them the dire circumstances and that I was coming as fast as I could, and they were on standby, ready to take him in and give him all they had.
As we pulled into the parking lot, the staff of PEC were already out the door sprinting to me and I remember handing off his limp and still chilled body and watching him lay limp in their arms as they whisked him into the building. I sat in the parking lot feeling stunned that he even made it this far alive, and after a short while the ER called to let me know that he was barely hanging in there but he was improving and I could head home for the night.
Forty eight hours later Lazarus was discharged from the hospital having made a truly miraculous recovery from his hypoglycemic and then hypothermic event that nearly cost him his life. He went on to make a full recovery and is now living large with a local family here in Spokane with his housemate Opie.
Happy and very Lucky Tails Lazarus. We love you so much.
