After a month of medical care, a cat is finally going home with the man who saved him from a busy freeway.
"I've got too much invested in this baby to let him fail," Richard Christianson, who aptly named the cat "Freeway," told ABC 15.
Posted by Arizona Humane Society on Thursday, May 14, 2015
Christianson made headlines in April after he rescued Freeway from a median on Arizona’s Interstate 17 after officials were delayed in rescuing the cat. The orange and white cat had blood around his mouth and legs, and had injured his jaw in an attempt to chew through a chain-link fence on the median.
The man told feline enthusiast site Catster at the time that he called 911 after spotting the frightened feline, and he was ultimately directed to the Department of Public Safety. He said a DPS official told him they had received multiple calls over the past few hours about the cat and were planning on sending out a unit. Christianson feared that the injured cat, already trapped in the hot sun for hours, would not survive until DPS managed to get there.
Unable to jump the spiked fence that separated him from the cat, Christianson circled his car around so that it was on the same side of the fence as the cat, then stopped about 20 feet from the animal before getting out to retrieve the cat by hand.
“When he pulled his paw away from the fence, it was like he was saying, 'Okay, just take me,'" Christianson told Catster. “I wrapped my shirt around him. He just went limp and started purring.”
Christianson caught the encounter in a video that shows Freeway helplessly mewing as the man approaches him.
It's crazy how people just assumed this cat was hit by a car and was dead and DPS and The Humane Society just ignored calls about this cat for over 6 hours ( 7 hours if you count the hour and 20 mins I waited for them ) the cats mouth is bleeding from trying to chew it's way through the fence, it wasn't dead or hit by a car, it was just stuck on the freeway ...the cat was scared and dehydrated ... Poor thing !! Please share this video to show the lack of response ability of the people our taxes pay their paychecks !!
Posted by Richard Christianson on Thursday, April 9, 2015
A representative from the Arizona Humane Society told Fox 29 at the time that they weren’t sure how the cat got to the median in the first place, but that burns on his leg indicate he may have been trapped inside a car engine.
Veterinarians determined that Freeway was an American Curl around 2 years old. The Arizona Humane Society and an experienced cat foster mother nursed the injured animal back to health over the past month, until he was ready to go home with Christianson.
Christianson, who already has three dogs and four cats, said he'd been planning on adopting Freeway from the beginning and was able to bring him home Thursday.
“He was hurt, but his life is going to be way different now,” he told Catster in April.
Now, Christianson is putting in the effort necessary to help Freeway overcome his rough past. He said in a public Facebook post Monday that he’d been staying up all night comforting Freeway from “nightmares and shaking and crying in his sleep.”
Been up ALL night with this guy. He's been having nightmares and shaking and crying in his sleep I've got him relaxed now I'm ready to crash out too goodnite
Posted by Richard Christianson on Monday, May 18, 2015
We’re glad Freeway is getting the care he deserves.
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