Meet The Handsome Former Street Cat With FIV Who Has Inspired His Parents To Help Other Homeless Kitties In Brazil!

Maree Erkkila and her partner Pete Ellice were driving home from lunch at a restaurant near her home in Aracaju, Brazil, when they spotted a homeless cat who appeared desperately in need of help. “He was so skinny that I said, ‘That cat looks about to die!’ ” remembers Maree, but being disabled, she didn’t have the funds to help the sickly feline. However, Maree told her fellow members of a cat group about the emaciated animal, and they agreed that if she rescued him, they would pay his medical bills until he was adopted.

The following day, May 2, 2018, Maree returned to the area where she and her partner had seen the bedraggled ginger cat, but they were unable to locate him. “We searched everywhere for him — with no luck — but got a number for a local volunteer who feeds the colony,” says Maree, and she reached out to the caretaker, telling her they wanted to rescue a specific cat. The next day, she got a call from the volunteer, letting Maree and Pete know she’d caught the kitty in question, Bob, aka Robert.

The following morning, the couple took Robert straight to the vet where a thorough examination revealed he was approximately seven years old, and he had a number of health issues, including stomatitis and a fungal infection. “He had mouth trouble for years, so had been in pain for years,” says Maree, but she doesn’t blame his caretakers. “The volunteers don’t even have enough money for food for the colony, so they couldn’t treat Robert’s condition for any useful length of time.”

Robert also tested positive for feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, which can weaken a cat’s immune system, making it harder for them fight diseases and infections. While there is a lot of misinformation about FIV all over the world, Maree — who is originally from New Zealand — discovered the virus carries a big stigma throughout much of her adopted home of Brazil. “When we rescued him people said, ‘He’ll be snapped up for adoption with his coloring!’ ” explains Maree. “But as soon as he tested FIV+, he was ignored.”

Because FIV is usually transmitted through sex and deep bite wounds, it’s possible for cats who have the virus to live with cats who don’t just as long as everyone is sterilized and gets along well. However, not everyone realizes this, making it harder for FIV positive felines to find homes.

“Here in Brazil, some people who met Robert still thought they could catch FIV!” says Maree, and even she had been misinformed about the virus, causing her to think she wouldn’t be able to foster or adopt Robert. “Vets here still say that you cannot mix FIV positive and negative cats under any circumstances and many still believe minimal contact can spread FIV, so with three cats at home, we thought my apartment was not an option.”

After he was rescued, Robert spent several weeks at the vet’s office undergoing treatments while Maree did everything she could think of to try to find him a forever home. “I did a singing video of him all sad, lip syncing ‘Somebody to Love’ by Queen,” says Maree, “but not one single person made contact about fostering or adopting him.”

Robert became increasingly depressed at the vet’s office, so Maree tried to convince her partner Pete to foster him. After all, he was a animal lover, but he’d sworn off adopting another pet after someone fatally poisoned his beloved cat. Thankfully, Pete relented, and on July 13, 2018, he began fostering Robert. “At first he was very frightened to be at the foster home, so he bit me very hard,” remembers Maree. “Ironic, being bitten by a cat with hardly any teeth.”

Over time, the former street cat became more comfortable in his foster home, despite needing multiple medications each day for stomatitis gingivitis complex and an aggressive fungal infection. By the following month, Pete — who had been extremely reluctant to open his home to another cat — had fallen in love with Robert, so he adopted him on August 2, 2018.

More than a year later, Robert is doing well, and he recently completed treatment for the fungal infection that caused his fur to fall out. “If he had not been a street cat, he’d never have got to such an advanced stage with his conditions, so care would have been much easier,” explains Maree.