One man simply couldn’t leave an injured cat lying in the middle of the road outside of his home, but as a result he now faces veterinary bills totaling more than $3,000.
“I picked him up and he was still alive,” Luke Chiarenda said about the cat he named Nails.
Chiarenda, a full-time member of the Army National Guard, said he was leaving his Rexford home on his way to work when he noticed the cat in the road in front of his home.
“I don’t feel it was right not to give him a fair chance, you wouldn’t do that to a human being,” Chiarenda said.
Chiarenda wasn’t sure if the cat would even make it through the night, appearing to have been hit by a car, but Nails remained strong and pulled through. Chiarenda then decided to take him to a veterinarian the next morning for initial emergency treatment.
There were several injuries identified after Nail’s initial treatment, including one leg with a broken joint, another leg with the ball connecting to the hip coming out and some minor head injuries.
“He was pretty banged up,” Chiarenda said.
Pretty soon the bills started piling up for a cat that wasn’t even his, but he continued with all necessary treatment to get Nails back on his paws. Nails is on track to recover from his injuries.
“The hard part for me was that I wouldn’t have asked for money if it was my cat in the first place,” he said.
Chiarenda said his aunt first reached out to him about getting in contact with Altamont-based Guilderhaven, Inc., which is a nonprofit organization formed in 2001 to help the animal community.
Sue Green, a board member of Guilderhaven, said she was moved by his story and the group offered to help him pay off veterinary bills.
“We just feel he has done a lot, maybe we can help a little,” Green said.
Green said the group had been looking to hold a garage sale to help raise funds for the organization, but Chiarenda’s situation spurred them into action.
“It motivated us to pull it together so we can help pay off some of the bill that was left,” Green said.
The garage sale will be held on Saturday, May 12, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Sunday, May 13, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 1097 Manas Drive in Rotterdam, which is located near Mohonasen High School.
Guilderhaven offers a variety of services and assistance, including providing food, transportation, medical intervention, facilitating spay and neuter clinics and providing financial assistance. The group has helped place animals from private homes and rescue groups of animals. It has also done educational outreach with schools and produced an educational coloring book.
“We seem to be a very unique organization and there don’t seem to be many others in New York State,” Green said. “Because we also help pay people’s bills, the word sort of gets around.
She said the group paid 31 separate veterinarian bills last year, which has also led the group to do more fundraising.
“We find that because of what we do we need to be doing a few more fundraisers than we normally do, which is one to two a year,” Green said.
She said yard sales are a good fundraising avenue because the group is able to talk to people about what it does.
“Yard sales are always fun,” she said. “You tend to meet a lot of really friendly people and they tell you all about their pets and we have a really good time.”
Chiarenda said he hopes the event helps raise awareness of the group, too.
“Hopefully there will be a grassroots movement to make these things aware for both donations and availability for people that really need it,” he said.
After finding the cat, he said he canvassed the neighborhood and put an advertisement in the newspaper, but he has never found an owner. He was planning to put the cat up for adoption, but now his family is planning to adopt Nails.
He said the veterinarians were the ones who suggested he adopt the cat.
“A lot of people have told us our family has gone above and beyond what people what normally would do,” he said.
