Sinbad, a 9-year-old Persian cat was found in the basement of an elderly man’s Chicago home last December. By the looks of him, Sinbad’s owner had been unable to care for him for quite some time. You see, Sinbad was covered with extremely matted fur – 5 pounds of it!
That’s more than half his body weight!
Unable to walk, barely able to move, weak, underfed, and in desperate need of help, the utility worker who discovered Sinbad brought him to The Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago where he had to be force-fed to save his life.
Then volunteers at the shelter began the task of freeing Sinbad from all that fur.
“Our humane investigation team went to the location and spoke with the owner of the cat,” says PR manager Colette Bradley. “He was an elderly man whose mental health was failing and he couldn’t care for the cat. Our humane investigators asked him if he would be willing to relinquish the cat into our care and he agreed. We brought him in to our facility and began to shave the 5 lbs. of matted hair off of him. It ended up taking two shaves.”
When the tiny, white, shaved cat was revealed, so was his sweet personality! “As soon as that hair started coming off and he could walk, he started rubbing up against the people in the room,” Bradley tells PEOPLE. “He was so affectionate and was looking for love in return. We were all shocked by how friendly he was considering he had such limited human interaction in his life prior to being rescued.”
The shelter says at first, Sinbad was wobbly on his back legs, having trouble walking around without falling down. They had atrophied from lack of use. But, within a few days, he was jumping up on furniture and using the litter box!
So where is Sinbad now? Well, he was fostered in-house at the Anti-Cruelty Society for a few days until an employee named Elliott Serrano volunteered to take him home for Christmas — and he was an immediate foster failure! Sinbad became a permanent member of Elliot’s family!
Don’t they look happy together?!
What an amazing transformation, Sinbad!
