Shelter Wanted to Euthanize This Afflicted Cat, But One Woman Knew Better

Someone scrolled past his photo and stopped.

That moment — unremarkable in its mechanics, just a thumb pausing on a screen — is the reason Journey is alive today.

Everything that followed, the treatment and the recovery and the three years of fighting and the eventual, extraordinary victory, traces back to that one person who looked at a photo of a sick cat and recognised something that everyone else had missed.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, the kill shelter in Southern California. The year is 2022, and a five-year-old cat has just arrived with a large, aggressive growth consuming the bridge of his nose.

He is breathing through his mouth. He is sneezing constantly. He weighs just over nine pounds, and his face is barely recognisable beneath the infection. The shelter assessed him, labelled him a cancer case, and recommended euthanasia.

His photo was shared on Facebook, passed from person to person with the particular quiet desperation of posts that hope someone, somewhere, will know what to do — and someone did.

Lucille was a foster carer with Pawsitive Tails to Remember  when the photo reached her. She looked at the growth on Journey's nose and recognised it immediately — not from a textbook, but from lived experience, from a cat she had cared for before. 

What the shelter had labelled cancer was Cryptococcosis: a rare fungal infection caused by inhaling spores from dried bird droppings, most commonly pigeons. Serious, yes. Frightening to look at, certainly. But treatable, if someone was willing to try.

She called the rescue's founder. The answer came without hesitation. They would take him.

There was one maddening complication. Shelters operate on mandatory holding periods, and Journey had to wait out every last day of his — eight days with no antifungal treatment, no pain relief, nothing but a cage and an infection that was getting worse by the hour.

By the time Lucille was finally able to bring him home, the deterioration was visible and significant. He was in pain. He couldn't purr because his airways were too congested to allow it.

But when a gentle hand reached in to pet him, he leaned into it. Even then, at his lowest, he wanted to be loved, and he wanted you to know it.

The vet visit confirmed the diagnosis and added weight to it. One of the worst cases of Cryptococcosis the vet had encountered. The infection had overtaken his nasal cavity entirely, leaving him to breathe through his mouth and dangerously exposed to secondary respiratory infections.

 A grade three heart murmur ruled out conventional pain medication — his heart simply couldn't handle it — and made anaesthesia too great a risk for the surgery that might otherwise have removed the growth. CBD oil was brought in instead.

The treatment plan that emerged was long, careful, and honest about its timeline: antifungal medication, taken consistently, for a year or more.

Progress arrived, but it did not travel in a straight line. The growth began to shrink, week by week, the nostrils slowly reappearing. The sneezing lessened.

And then the setbacks arrived — the growth softening and ulcerating, splitting open and bleeding in the night, rounds of antibiotics to hold off secondary infections, Lucille applying ointment and watching over him through difficult stretches.

His coat grew ragged. Blood appeared on the outer surface of his nostrils. Surgery remained off the table. The road was longer and harder than anyone had hoped.

And Journey kept showing up for it.

He started rolling around playfully next to Lucille. He developed a profound enthusiasm for being brushed. He discovered the particular satisfaction of sitting on a lap and claimed it as a personal right.

On good days, he ventured outside for short excursions — and after approximately fifteen minutes, decided that was quite sufficient adventure and went back inside to rest. A perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation.

Six months in, blood work returned with good news: his kidneys and liver, taxed by the long-term medication, were holding steady. His heart murmur hadn't worsened.

He had gained two ounces, which Lucille reported with a laugh that contained everything she'd been carrying for months. Seven months in, he was exploring new corners of the house, seeking out company, eating better.

Not dramatic milestones — but anyone who has sat with a seriously ill animal knows exactly what they mean.

Neuter day, delayed and delayed again by illness and logistics and a fully booked clinic, finally arrived. Journey went in on an IV drip of warm fluids, connected to a heart monitor and a ventilator, every precaution in place. He came through it perfectly.

Something else was happening alongside his recovery. Journey had become known.

His story had moved across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, gathering followers and donations and goodwill from people around the world who had never met a cat and chose to care about this one.

He had appeared in interviews, featured in calendars, become an unlikely international ambassador for a disease most people had never heard of before his face appeared on their screens.

And then the number that made everything real.

At the rescue, Journey's blood titer — the measurement tracking the level of fungus in his bloodstream — had stood at over 30,000. By late 2024, it had fallen to 32. A reading of zero, confirmed three times at six-week intervals, would mean a cure.

In September 2025, three years after a kill shelter had labelled him a cancer case and pointed toward the end, Journey received that result.

Cured.

He came in written off, labelled hopeless, running out of time in a cage.

He came through three years of medication and setbacks and careful, devoted care, and he came out the other side with a clean bill of health, a worldwide community of people who had followed every update, and a name that had always suited him more than anyone knew at the beginning.

The journey was long, and hard, and worth every single step — It usually is.

Check out Journey in the video below:

A big thank you to Lucy for sharing Journey's story with us

You can see more of Journey on Instagram

And find out more about Pawsitive Tails to Remember here

Related story: Stray Mama Cat Survives Cancer and Heartbreak, Blossoms Into the Most Devoted Cat Ever

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