If you remember the photos from the day Stevie was rescued, that little face is hard to forget.
When Stevie first came to us, both eyes were so swollen you could barely make out her features. The tissue around them had been badly damaged, and even the bone between her eyes was exposed. From the pattern of her injuries, the vets strongly suspected she had been bitten by a venomous snake. We will never know exactly what she went through—but we know this much: long before she met us, she had already endured more pain than we can imagine.
In those early days she was frightened of everyone. Whenever a hand came near she would put out a paw—but the longer we spent with her, the clearer it became that she never truly wanted to hurt anyone. In pain, and barely able to see, it was simply the only way she had to protect herself.
Stevie’s road so far
- 2026-06-15 — Rescued from a vegetable garden in Jinshan and rushed to hospital.
- 2026-06-23 — First surgery. She moves into a staff member’s home to recover somewhere quiet and safe.
- 2026-07-07 — Facial reconstruction: a skin flap, still carrying its own blood supply, is moved to cover the damage.
- 2026-07-14 — Follow-up appointment; her lower left eyelid is reviewed for further reconstruction.
Through these weeks she went back to National Taiwan University’s animal hospital almost every week. The medical team carefully cleared away dead bone and tissue, time after time, so that healthy new tissue had the chance to grow. Her left eye—the thing we worried about most—was something they fought hard to save, and eventually the news we had been hoping for arrived: new blood vessels had begun to grow across the cornea.
“It’s not a miracle. It’s one careful operation after another, and Stevie’s own refusal to give up.”
On 2026-07-07 she came through the most important operation so far. The surgeon took a flap of skin from near the left corner of her mouth—skin that still carried its own blood supply—and moved it to cover the damaged part of her face. Because it stays connected to its own blood vessels and keeps receiving nourishment, it is far more likely to survive and heal cleanly than an ordinary graft. You can now make out the shape of her features again.
Put today’s Stevie beside the photos from the day she was found and you can see it: the small face once almost lost to its wounds is slowly finding its outline again. There is still a long road ahead—more follow-ups, perhaps more surgery—but she is walking it, and not alone. We owe a particular thank-you to the surgical team at National Taiwan University’s animal hospital.
