Miracle Maisy Is Bound and Tied, Soaked in Petrol, Sealed Up in a Plastic Bag, and Then Run Through a Trash Compactor but, Amazingly, Is Still Alive Today Thanks to a Pair of Compassionate Garbagemen

Maisy Drenched in Deadly Petrol

"I was awake all night Tuesday (April 4th) hoping that she would just get through the night. This has been one of the worst cases I've dealt with. I was in tears most of the night worrying that she would pass away."

-- veterinarian Kimya Davani

A cat-hating monster of undetermined pedigree and affiliation wanted one-year-old Maisy dead so badly that either he or she went to quadruple lengths in order to turn that objective into a reality. That individual began by binding the small, brown-colored cat's four appendages with, most likely, either rope or some type of tape before dousing her from head to toe in petrol. The next order of business was to seal her up tightly inside a plastic trash bag an then to stuff her into a garbage can at the curb in order to be collected by the trash haulers.

Any one of those diabolical means would have sufficient in that, first of all, the fumes from the petrol would have, sooner or later, either sucked the breath out of her or damaged her respiratory system so irreparably that she no longer would have been able to breathe. She additionally could have been burned alive in the ensuing conflagration if a passerby had unknowingly tossed a cigarette into the garbage can.

Secondly, she very easily could have suffocated to death inside the bag. Thirdly, she likely would have been unwittingly crushed to death by either the trash haulers or at whatever facility that they dump their loads at the end of the day.

Finally, if against all odds she had been able to have weathered all of those perils, she surely would have succumbed to hunger and thirst at some point. It accordingly is hard to imagine that any cat ever has found herself in such dire and utterly hopeless circumstances.

Her very clever assailant thought that either he or she had covered all the bases but that individual made one little mistake in that he had failed to gag Maisy. As things eventually turned out, that oversight made the difference between life and death.

At some undisclosed time during the afternoon of April 4th, two garbagemen stopped to make a pickup in the 500 block of North Front Street in Reading, one-hundred-five kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, whereupon they nonchalantly picked up the bag containing Maisy and tossed it in the rear of their truck. The bag in short order was packed and crushed.

Maisy's Saviors Alongside Their Rig

Normally, that would have been the end of Maisy and this story never would have been written but she, somehow, had miraculously eluded being crushed to smithereens by the compactor. Every bit as amazing she still had enough life still left in her tiny body in order to cry out for help.

The unidentified workmen, who slave away for Harold Adam Refuse Removal in Hamburg, three-three kilometers north of Reading, not only heard her plaintive cries for help but waded into the piles of smelly and rotting garbage in order to pull her out alive. They did not stop there, however, but instead took time out from their exceedingly demanding schedule in order to transport her to the Humane Society of Berks County (HSBC).

The charity's Chelsea Cappellano took one look at Maisy and was horror-stricken. "This is the worse animal cruelty case I've ever seen or experienced," she declared to the Reading Eagle on April 6th. (See "Cat Found Doused in Gasoline in Garbage Can in Reading.")

She almost immediately was transferred next door to Humane Veterinary Hospitals Reading (HVHR) where Kimya Davani and her crackerjack staff launched into an all-out race against the clock in order to reclaim Maisy's fragile life from the ice-cold hands of the Grim Reaper. Considering the pitiful state that she was in, the odds were heavily stacked against Davani and her assistants.

Since she had been so extraordinarily lucky in avoiding the compactor's blade, the staff christened her Miracle Maisy. Even so, the estimated six hours that she had spent breathing in the petrol fumes had taken their toll on her.

"The first twenty-four hours are crucial. Though there are no visible life-threatening injuries, we are worried that the toxicity of the gasoline has affected her lungs and neurological functioning," Davani disclosed to the Reading Eagle. "At this time, we're monitoring her for onset illness and ensuring that her chemical burns and bruises heal properly."

Maisy after Having Been Shampooed and Shaven

In addition to all of that, her body temperature had dropped precipitately, she was emaciated, dehydrated, and had sustained unspecified damage to her liver. The most pressing issue, however, was to remove the petrol from her fur and skin before it siphoned the life out of her.

In furtherance of that worthy objective, Davani and her staff spent the greater part of that first day shampooing and drying Maisy's fur but when that endeavor ultimately proved to be insufficient they were forced into taking a bolder initiative. "The gas was so embedded in her fur that she wasn't drying, and because of this her internal body temperature had dropped," Davani told the Reading Eagle. "We had to shave most of her body in order to get her temperature up again."

She also was outfitted with a sweater in order to help her keep warm. After that, however, there was little that Davani and her staff could do except to wait and hope for the best.

"I was awake all night Tuesday (April 4th) hoping that she would just get through the night," she told the Reading Eagle on April 7th. (See "Miracle Maisy on the Mend.") "This has been one of the worst cases I've dealt with. I was in tears most of the night worrying that she would pass away."

Anyone who ever has attended to ailing cats can readily sympathize with those sentiments. The overwhelming majority of the time they do not pull through whereas in other instances they mount courageous, last-minute rallies only to turn around and break their owners hearts to bits by succumbing to the Grim Reaper's machinations.

One never knows how these things are going to turn out unless one is willing to pull out all the stops and to travel that last, lonely mile in an effort to save a dying cat's life. It does not happen too often in this world but ever once in a blue moon even the calloused hearts of The Fates can be swayed by tears and that, mercifully, was the case with those that Davani shed on Maisy's behalf.

Maisy Was Fitted with a Sweater in Order to Keep Her Warm

"Maisy is feeling great today. Most of her vitals have returned to normal and she started bonding with some of our staff members," Davani was able to joyfully report to the Reading Eagle on April 7th. "But I think she may still be a little overstimulated with all the attention she's getting."

By either April 8th or April 9th, she was well enough in order to be placed in foster care with a woman identified only as Donna. A few days later she was dewormed and vaccinated against rabies and the Feline Panleukopenia Virus.

"Her coat is slowly growing back in, and her skin redness has subsided substantially, though she's feeling a bit itchy now. She is still underweight but has shown improvement since her last visit," Davani's colleague at HVHR, Alicia Simoneau, wrote in an untitled April 12th article that was posted on HSBC's Facebook page. "One concern that remains is her constant paw and tail flickering. This could be the lingering effects from the gasoline exposure, and we'll continue to monitor her for changes."

On April 14th, she was spayed and returned to her foster mom. In an April 18th posting on HSBC's Facebook page Donna described her as "playful, affectionate, and super-friendly."

Following a detailed screening process, the HSBC said good-bye to Maisy on either April 29th or April 30th when it and Donna relinquished custody of her to an anonymous adopter. "Maisy is settling in nicely. She's radiant energy!" that truly blessed individual wrote May 1st on HSBC's Facebook page. "Within twenty-four-hours she already started purring, investigating, and playing. String seems to be her favorite toy."

The HSBC was equally ecstatic. "We're over the moon knowing Miracle Maisy has a home, one that will erase all the bad memories of her traumatic experience and replace them with nothing but love and kindness," it wrote in the same Facebook article.

 Kimya Davani Worked Tirelessly in Order to Save Maisy's Life

The response from the authorities to this latest, horrific act of cruelty perpetrated against an innocent and defenseless cat has been predictable; c'est-à-dire, all blow and no go. "It's critically important that we protect the animals in the community," Karel Minor of Humane Pennsylvania, an umbrella organization of which HSBC is a member, told the Reading Eagle in the April 6th article cited supra. "It's our goal for whoever committed this terrible crime to receive the help they need or the prosecution they deserve."

Pursuant to that the HSBC has offered a US$1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest but just how disingenuous all such offers of that sort are was made manifest when PETA followed suit by offering to part with US$5,000 from its precious hoard. (See the Philly Voice, April 10, 2017, "Reward Up to $6,000 in Pennsylvania Case of Cat Doused with Gas, Tossed in Trash Truck.")

Besides the well-known fact that rewards of this nature are almost exclusively public relations stunts that rarely, if ever, produce any positive results, PETA is way too busy stealing and killing cats to ever be bothered with saving so much as a solitary feline soul. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007, February 9, 2007, and October 7, 2011 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in a North Carolina Courtroom," "Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs," and "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

Given that PETA's wholesale crimes against the species have been so thoroughly documented, the capitalist media's stubborn insistence upon doing its bidding can only mean that they not only share its viewpoint but support its killing of cats. Absolutely no one has the guts to call a spade a spade but allowing PETA to put in its two cents' worth on any issue affecting cats is tantamount to the media designating the Ku Klux Klan as the go to organization for a comment on issues concerning black-Americans.

Make no mistake about it: PETA does not speak for any individual or group with any degree of credibility within the feline protection movement. Au contraire, it mouths off only for itself and its champions within the thoroughly dishonest and discredited capitalist media.

Animal cruelty cases are solvable only through the application of sound detective work and although the Reading Police Department (RPD) is supposedly looking into the attack on Maisy, there is not so much as a scintilla of evidence that it has stirred so much as a muscle in that regard. Even in those rare cases when arrests have been made, prosecutors rarely go after the culprits with anything other than wet noodles, juries fail to convict, and even when they do judges adamantly refuse to mete out any jail time.

Consequently, countless cats wind up each year in garbage trucks, city dumps, and at recycling centers. Worst still, with the exception of a minute few of them, such as was the case with Maisy, Autumn, Alfie, and Penny, there are not any eleventh-hour reprieves. (See Cat Defender posts of March 23, 2009, May 4, 2010, and August 23, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Mistakenly Tossed Out in the Trash, Autumn Survives a Harrowing Trip to the City Dump in Order to Live Another Day," "Picked Up by a Garbage Truck Driver and Dumped with the Remainder of the Trash, Alfie Narrowly Misses Being Recycled," and "An Alert Scrap Metal Worker Discovers a Pretty 'Penny' Hidden in a Mound of Rubble.")

Maisy Likes to Chase Strings

A few of the lucky ones are discovered before they wind up on garbage trucks but even then it is an awfully close, not to mention traumatic, shave for them. (See Cat Defender posts of October 3, 2009, February 24, 2010, February 25, 2010, and October 24, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Deliberately Entombed Inside a Canvas Bag for Six Days, Duff Is Saved by a Pair of Alert Maintenance Workers at an Apartment Complex in Spokane," "Sealed Up in a Backpack Inside a Plastic Bag and Then Tossed in the Trash, Titch Is Rescued by a Passerby in Essex," "Bess Twice Survives Attempts Made on Her Life Before Landing on All Four Paws at a Pub in Lincolnshire," and "Chucked Out in the Trash, Tabitha Winds Up in an Oxygen Chamber with Four Broken Ribs, an Injured Lung, and Pneumonia.")

In Maisy's case, the prima facie evidence is mixed. On the one hand, her emaciation would seem to imply that she was homeless while, on the other hand, her friendly demeanor suggests that she, at least at some point in her life, had had a guardian. The perpetrator of this despicable act of animal cruelty therefore could have been either her previous owner or an inveterate cat-hater, such as either an ornithologist, wildlife biologist, or environmentalist. (See Cat Defender posts of May 18, 2013 and April 4, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It" and "A Mass Murderer of Cats, Entrepreneur, Medicine Man, and Artist Are Just a Few of the Many Hats That Are Worn by a 'Hands-On Environmentalist' on Kangaroo Island.")

On the positive side of the ledger, if this incident has exposed what The Shadow used to refer to as "the evil that lurks in the hearts of men," it simultaneously has highlighted the good that is also to be found therein. First and foremost, there were the two-hundred individuals who by April 6th had compassionately opened up their hearts and wallets to the tune of US$6,500 for Maisy's immediate care. "We have been very surprised by the support we've received," Mary Keller of Humane Pennsylvania told the Reading Eagle in the April 7th article cited supra.

Secondly, Maisy was the beneficiary of the expert and conscientious care provided by Davani and her staff at HVHR. At the very pinnacle of this honor roll of heroes, however, are the trash haulers from Harold Adam without whose derring-do Maisy never would have made it to HVHR in the first place.

"We are so thankful to those men and the trash company for bringing her in," Cappellano acknowledged to the Reading Eagle on April 6th. "Many people would have turned a blind eye in this situation, but they were proactive in getting her the help she needs."

Truer words never have been spoken and this pair of hard-working men are true heroes in every sense of that word. They even stopped by HVHR on April 7th in order to check on how Maisy was progressing.

Maisy Has Plenty of Toys to Play With These Days

The compassion that they showed Maisy is not anything unusual for members of their profession. For instance on August 28, 2015, Bekir Mercil and his two assistants devoted thirty minutes of their valuable time in order to unload four to five tons of trash from their truck in order to save the life of tiny brown kitten named Melker.

Without their dramatic intervention, he would have been burned to a crisp at a plant in Stockholm. Like Maisy's rescuers, they did not rest on their laurels, however, but instead transported him to a shelter where Maria Carlsson of a veterinary clinic in Vallentuna, thirty-six kilometers north of Stockholm, later adopted him. (See The Local of Stockholm, August 28, 2015, "Stockholm Bin Men Rescue Doomed Kitten" and the Daily Mail, September 11, 2015, "Binmen to the Rescue! Cat Is Plucked from Under Five Tonnes (sic) of Rotting Waste Just Moments Before It Was Due to Be Incinerated.")

None of the heroics of all of those involved in rescuing Maisy can completely obliterate, however, the sobering conclusion that Pennsylvania is one of the worst places for cats to live in America. First of all, the police make a habit out of murdering them on sight. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008 and September 1, 2016 entitled, respectively, "Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo" and "The Legal and Political Establishment in a Small Pennsylvania Backwater Closes Ranks and Pulls Out All the Stops in Order to Save the Job and Liberty of the Bloodthirsty Cop Who Murdered Sugar.")

That is another reason why that members of the law enforcement community, such as the RPD, so stubbornly refuse to take seriously cruelty to cats. That in turn puts them in the same class of rotters as the hypocritical, cat-killing scumbags at PETA.

Some of the Keystone State's shelters and sanctuaries likewise can be safely dismissed as little more than feline slaughterhouses. (See Cat Defender posts of March 19, 2010 and May 10, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Trapped and Killed by the Delaware County SPCA, Keecha's Life Is Valued at Only $1 by a Pennsylvania Arbitration Panel" and "Lunatic Rulings in Cats With No Name Cruelty Cases Prove Once Again That Pennsylvania Is a Safe Haven for Cat Killers and Junkies.")

Even its highfalutin and pompous, albeit as rich as Croesus, universities are little more than hangouts for feline abusers and killers.  (See Cat Defender posts of February 12, 2007, June 9, 2008, and March 19, 2014 entitled, respectively, "God-Fearing Baptists at Eastern University Kill Off Their Feral Cats on the Sly while Students Are Away on Christmas Break," "Pennsylvania College Greedily Snatches Up Alumnus' Multimillion-Dollar Bequest but Turns Away His Cat, Princess," and "Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital.")

Pretty Little Maisy Is Hoping to Make a New Start in Life

Like any other jurisdiction around the world, Pennsylvania also has its fair share of drunkards, motorists, and mutilators who are allowed by the authorities to injure and kill cats with impunity. (See Cat Defender posts of October 30, 2010, March 5, 2007, and April 24, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Drunken Bum Is Foiled in a Macabre Plot to Make a Meal Out of Kittens, Nirvana and Karma, That He Allegedly Ran Down Earlier with His Truck," "Run Down by a Motorist and Frozen to the Ice by His Own Blood, Roo Is Saved by a Caring Woman," and "Holly Crawford Hits the Jackpot by Drawing a Judge Who Simply Adores Kitten Mutilators and Dope Addicts.")

It is extremely difficult to properly assess Maisy's prospects considering the extent of the damage that has been inflicted upon her young and tiny body. At last word, she was eating and drinking normally and that her blood levels had returned to normal. (See the Reading Eagle, April 11, 2017, "Maisy the Cat Recovering in Foster Care.")

She still has some tenderness in her hips, however, and her liver has been damaged as the result of the petrol leaching into it through the pores in her skin. Despite all of that, Davani expects the organ to improve in time and for her to be able to enjoy a perfectly normal life.

Hopefully, that will come to pass but only time will tell. Not many cats that are tossed out in the trash survive long enough in order to live another day so it is high time that one of them finally got the best of those formidable odds.

Hers is only one small victory, however, on a worldwide battlefield that is littered with the dead bodies of countless cats. Nevertheless, all of those involved in saving Maisy can take immense satisfaction in knowing that, at least on this all-too-rare occasion, they have prevailed over the machinations of a determined cat killer. Maisy's triumph and recovery therefore belongs to them every bit as much as it does to her and it is, above all, truly something to be celebrated and cherished.

Photos: Humane Society of Berks County (Maisy covered in petrol, shaven and shampooed, wearing a sweater, playing with a string and her toys, up-close, and her saviors) and Susan Keen of the Reading Eagle ( Maisy with Davani).