Brave Kitten Harvey Will Walk Again

The pictures of Harvey the kitten crawling around on his elbows tugged at the heart-strings of cat-lovers across the globe.

The four-month-old rescue cat was born with a rare condition which meant he had no bones in his front legs.





 
But Harvey is now expected to be walking around on his front paws in a couple of months after a total of £3,500 was donated to fund an operation to fix the birth defect. The money has flooded in during the past few days to a JustGiving webpage, called 'Harvey's Appeal', set up by staff at Glasgow Cats Protection. An X-ray revealed that Harvey’s ulna and radius bones, which connect the upper half of his front legs to his paws, were missing.

‘Because Harvey was born that way he doesn’t know there’s anything wrong with him so he runs around on his elbows'.

Harvey is missing the bones that connect the upper half of the front legs to the paws, but is due to have metal pins fitted as a replacement thanks to animal charity Cats Protection.



Radial agenesis causes the two long bones in the lower foreleg to be unusually short. In severe cases the bone is almost absent and the paw appears to be attached to the elbow. Only four cats have been born with radial agenesis in Scotland in the past 30 years.