A one-pound grey tabby kitten was found out in a field and didn't know how to eat. Now a one-year-old cat, he's grown into a fluffy gentleman wearing a tuxedo tie.
ConradCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
Look at Conrad today, and you’d never guess where he started. He’s a big, handsome, impossibly fluffy gray cat who turned one this year, the kind who commands a room just by sitting in it.
A year ago, the picture could not have been more different. Conrad was found alone in a field, a tiny kitten who was lethargic, dehydrated, and shutting down.
He landed at a local shelter that could not give him the round-the-clock care he needed, and a hard cutoff was already closing in. Conrad was running out of time, fast.
Barely a pound, and nearly out of timeCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
A community plea went out for Conrad with a hard deadline of 4 PM. If no one stepped up by then, this one-pound kitten was going to run out of chances.
A rescue stepped in and pulled him from the shelter just in time. He was stable enough to leave the shelter, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet, because this fragile baby still needed far more help than he could manage on his own.
Round-the-clock feedingsCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
Once he was stable, Conrad went into foster care with Welcome to the Zoo, a Tampa, Florida foster team, and the round-the-clock work began in earnest. Shut down and overwhelmed, he could not manage food on his own, so his foster fed him around the clock by syringe for the first few days.
Meal by meal, the tiny kitten got the hang of it. After days of patient hand-feeding, Conrad finally started eating on his own, the first real sign he was going to make it.
A whole pound of kitten, give or take a soda canCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
To understand just how small Conrad was, you only have to put him next to a soda can. At one pound, the fuzzy gray kitten barely came up past the top of it.
For something so little, he had a remarkable amount of fluff and an even more remarkable determination to keep going. Every day he ate, he got a little stronger.
The names Conrad. Credit: Welcome To The Zoo
Watch the before-and-after side by side, and the change is hard to believe. The frail little kitten from the field and the lush, confident cat he became look like two entirely different animals.
As a grown cat, he turns up in the video wearing a little black tuxedo tie, looking every bit the sophisticated gentleman. It’s a long way from the shut-down one-pound baby found in the field.
Growing fluffier, and bolder, by the weekCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
Safe in foster care, Conrad blossomed. The dull, dehydrated kitten from the shelter filled out into a bright-eyed ball of fluff who looked nothing like the baby who had arrived shutting down.
Week by week he grew rounder and softer, trading the hard edges of those first days for the easy comfort of a kitten who had worked out he was finally safe.
Patient enough, it turns out, for a tiny witch hatCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
His foster could not resist documenting every stage, hat included. Conrad put up with a tiny orange witch hat with the patience of a kitten who had decided these people were worth humoring.
He turned out to be endlessly photogenic, which made the job easy. From a basket by the brick wall to a crochet witch hat, the kitten who nearly didn’t make it became a regular little model.
One year old, and celebrated in styleCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
The clearest proof of how far Conrad has come arrived on his first birthday. His adopter threw him a full party, a lit-up CONRAD sign, a cat-themed birthday screen, the works, and held him close for the photos.
The former foster kitten is now a thoroughly adored member of the household. “Seeing our former fosters happy, healthy, and so loved will never get old,” Conrad’s foster shared with LoveMeow.
Conrad today, every inch the handsome catCredit: Welcome To The Zoo
A year ago, Conrad was a one-pound kitten alone in a field, up against a 4 PM deadline and with no idea how to eat.
Today he’s a magnificent, fluffy gentleman perched on a chair of his own in a home that adores him, a first birthday already behind him.
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