Bertha was somehow found as a stray and taken to a local shelter, but how she’d survived as a stray remains a total mystery — because she weighed around 30 pounds.
“I couldn’t even believe that she was a cat,” Jemma Omidian, Bertha’s mom, said in a video for The Dodo. “She couldn’t step into the litter box. She was unable to groom herself. I just knew the moment I saw her that I had to help her, and I had to bring her home.”
Omidian decided she would make it her mission to get Bertha to a healthy weight, but she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Poor Bertha could barely move, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of exercising. All the extra weight was weighing on her, literally, and making her feel not so great. Still, Omidian was determined.
“She wanted to be a cat,” Omidian said. “She just couldn’t.”
Omidian took Bertha for walks to get her used to exercising, and at the beginning, she would only take a few steps at a time. They stuck with it, though, and three months later, Bertha was already making major progress.
“She actually managed to get her leg up,” Omidian said. “I was like, ‘Yes, she’s finally grooming herself!’ And I just knew that from that point on, things were getting better.”
Suddenly Bertha was moving around easier, slipping under smaller spaces and going up and down stairs. Omidian was so thrilled at all of the progress Bertha had made and couldn’t have been prouder if she tried. Originally the plan was just to foster Bertha, but Omidian realized then that she’d fallen in love.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I put all this effort in. I need to keep this cat,’” Omidian said.
Today, Bertha is a completely different cat. She’s unrecognizable from the day she was first rescued, and she’s truly living her best life thanks to Omidian and the journey they embarked on together. She arrived at the shelter about two years ago weighing just under 30 pounds — and now she weighs 9 pounds, a healthy weight for a cat of her size.
“Every single step, every milestone, just made me so happy and so proud,” Omidian said. “It’s the first time in her life where she feels good.”
