A nursing unit assistant in Williams Lake found herself with an extra special patient for about five weeks.
Brielle Gagnon was on shift at Cariboo Memorial Hospital when paramedics rushed in a patient with a three-month-old kitten into the Emergency Room at the end of January.
Gagnon said the kitten was malnourished, and the patient surrendered the kitten in the ER, claiming they could no longer properly care for the little guy.
“The paramedics didn’t know what to do, so I helped them out,” Gagnon, who has pets from rescues, says. “I contacted our local vet’s after-hours emergency and they were willing to take him in overnight.”
Gagnon says initially the vets didn’t think the little kitten was going to survive the night. But he did, with Gagnon believing that he would the entire time.
“ It was in his eyes. You could tell that he had so much love. Even though he was so weak and not well. It felt like he had so much love to give. He was baking biscuits with his paws, and purring. He looked like he had such a fight still left in him.”
When Gagnon returned the next day to see him, he was already given to the SPCA. Gagnon contacted the SPCA and was able to foster the kitten until he was better.
So began five weeks with weekly check-ins with vets, special food, and making sure the young kitten was fed. Gagnon and her husband had to keep the kitten in a separate room from their other pets, until he was feeling better and gained some weight.
“My animals fell in love with him,” Gagnon says. “Then my husband fell in love with him, we all did. So once he was better, the SPCA offered us to adopt him.”
The little kitten now goes by the name Bourbon. Gagnon says, Bourbon is getting along well with his new human family, and his animal-siblings, the dogs Duke and Tennessee, and cat Whiskey.
“[Bourbon] thinks he is the man of the house. He’s very tiny, but he’s got that ‘big dog attitude’,” Gagnon said. “He likes to boss Duke, our big 120 plus pound German Shephard around. Bourbon thinks he is the man of the house, he fits right in.”
–Files by Teryn Midzain, My Cariboo Now
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