[Original thread title: Had to Share This! 
But some nasty pics :-(]
Here is R&B when she was spotted on a rooftop in JiuFen, an injury to her neck and shoulder just barely visible:
The girl who spotted her was unable to catch her and went on an animal-welfare BBS to appeal for help. An AnimalsTaiwan volunteer spotted the plea, took one of our humane cat traps, and headed to JiuFen to catch poor R&B.
On getting the mangled moggy to the AnimalsTaiwan vet, the cause and extent of her injury became horrifically clear: she had a rubber band stretched around her neck and armpit, and over time it had cut deep into her flesh:
Our vets did a great job of tending to R&B’s injuries, and she was sent to our holding centre to recuperate. Although she made great progress physically, R&B refused to allow anyone near her, and was visibly terrified whenever a hand reached into her cage. She would even hiss at any other cat who looked at her.
It was decided that, as sad as it was, R&B would never be comfortable in a home, and that she would be better off going back where we found her instead of being rehomed - we just hoped that she would be able to stay out of harm’s way.
But the day before R&B was set to be returned, a wonderful couple who had been fosteriing one of our feral kittens, Sparkles, called to say that Sparkles had made great progress and was now friendly towards people, and that they would like to take on another to give her someone to play with when they weren’t at home. We ran down the list of cats we had available, and casually mentioned R&B, but dismissed her as beyond hope and explained that she was about to be returned.
Well, this couple love a challenge, and they love to help AnimalsTaiwan; they decided to take the cat who no one else would take, as that would be more help to us. We agreed, and let them know that we expected no miracles and reminded them that it would be fine to let us know if it was really too much trouble having R&B around.
That was about five or six weeks ago. It clearly wasn’t easy. We received several updates over the weeks about how R&B was now coming out at night, when the lights were off and no one was around, or how she had dashed out quickly from under the sofa once, but it seemed that the miracle they had pulled off with Sparkles was not going to work on R&B. But then I got an email this morning, and it made my day. The once scared little cat who hid from human eyes had started to come out and make friends.
Thanks to the amazing patience and dedication of these wonderful people, R&B is clearly well on the road to rehabilitation, and is already starting to trust people again. Obviously, she has learned to make feline friends, too.
I like this story a lot, because it shows how, with a little intervention, we can turn hopeless situations into hopeful ones, that we can have happy endings where sad ones seemed imminent, and that patient, kind, and compassionate people can change the life of a once destitute fellow animal and give him or her a bright future.
Both Sparkles and R&B are now available for adoption. We hope they can be rehomed together, but that may be too much to hope for … but then, we’ve been wrong about that before. 
If you have the patience and understanding to put the icing on this cake and provide the happiest of endings to this tale, please contact me today.
Thank you.
Sean
0920 620 109
