Mr. Meeseeks was found last fall, along with his mom and five siblings, abandoned in a box left outside in the rain. The entire family was taken in by Broward County Animal Care in Florida, and the whole shelter was immediately struck by what an unusual-looking litter of kittens Meeseeks and his siblings were.

It’s often difficult to find foster homes for a mom cat and her kittens, and no one was sure what would happen to them. Not long after they came in, though, Amanda Kruczynski, one of the staffers at the shelter and an avid foster mom, heard about them and went to see them in their holding kennel. As soon as she saw all the kittens huddled up against their mom, she knew she couldn’t leave their fate up to chance.

“I put them all into a carrier and took them home on my lunch break,” Kruczynski told The Dodo. “I knew they would need time to heal from what they had gone through and I wanted to be able to lend a hand in that. We never did find out how they came to be in that box that night or why they were abandoned.”

From the very beginning, Meeseeks was different from his siblings. When he first arrived in his foster home, he was too small to move around much and mostly stayed curled up in a little ball. He was so tiny and fuzzy, he barely even looked real, and a lot of people had a hard time believing that he actually was.

“Nobody believed his kitten photos were real,” Kruczynski said. “He looked like a little felt toy and his size made it that much more unbelievable. Anyone who met him in person instantly fell in love and I had so many adoption inquiries about his entire litter. Talk about a one in a million cat.”

Meeseeks and his siblings seemed to be doing well, until one day when the entire litter was diagnosed with feline distemper, a potentially deadly disease that some kittens do not survive. Miraculously, all six kittens were able to pull through, and eventually it was time to put the entire cat family up for adoption. When it came time to say goodbye, though, there was one kitten that Kruczynski couldn’t part with, and that was little Meeseeks.

“The day we went to the shelter to say our goodbyes, I hesitated,” Kruczynski said. “I’d never hesitated before. He looked up at me from the mass of fluffy siblings in his carrier and basically signed the adoption papers himself.”

While all of his siblings recovered normally from their feline distemper, Meeseeks never seemed quite right in the following weeks. He started vomiting daily, and eventually began having severe respiratory problems. It soon became clear that there was something serious going on with him, but test after test came up with nothing, and his new family was at a complete loss. They were already so in love with the unique little kitten, and they knew they had to do everything they could to help him pull through.

After being misdiagnosed with cancer and incorrectly given very little time left to live, Meeseeks was finally diagnosed with feline gastrointestinal eosinophilic sclerosing fibroplasia. While the disease is newly discovered and not a lot is known about it, it’s something that Meeseeks is able to live with through the help of his vets and his family, and for that everyone is so grateful.

“Once he started on his treatment his personality really started to shine through,” Kruczynski said. “He’s extremely energetic! He absolutely loves to play with the laser pointer and would run around chasing it for hours if we let him! At night time he knows where I sleep and will scratch on my pillow until I let him under the covers. He has always remained extremely attached to me.”

To this day, people are still bewildered by Meeseeks’ unusual appearance, and love looking at pictures of his unique, adorable face. He’s unlike any other cat his family has ever met, and despite his many issues, they couldn’t be more grateful that he found his way into their lives.

“Even after everything we’ve been through I would never regret adopting him, even for a second,” Kruczynski said. “There’s no way to know how long he has here with us but [if] he’s fought through this much already, there’s no reasons to doubt that he’ll keep on fighting.”

*Source: thedodo.com