Last Updated on March 25, 2026 by admin
The cat was in their garden when they first noticed him.
He wasn’t moving much. He was drooling so heavily it soaked his chin. Flies had settled on his coat in clusters, and he was so thin that every bone in his spine was visible beneath the fur. He wasn’t asking for food. He wasn’t making a sound. He was just there — in the garden of Keith Beja and Ivy Cuebillas in the Philippines — staying close to the one place that had offered him some warmth.
Neither Keith nor Ivy had ever owned a cat.
They started leaving food out.
Nicolas — that’s what they named him — had clearly been on his own for a long time. His mouth was the worst of it. There was a sore inside that made eating agonising, which is why he’d stopped doing it. By the time Keith and Ivy noticed him, he’d gone so long without proper nutrition that his ribs and spine stood out like ridges under loose skin.
Stray cats like Nicolas are common across the Philippines. Locals call them puspin — a contraction of pusa (cat) and Pilipino — and they’re often treated as background noise. Most people look away. Most people keep walking.
Keith and Ivy didn’t keep walking.
They brought Nicolas to the Manila Feline Center. The tests came back fast, and none of the results were simple.
Nicolas was FIV-positive. Feline Immunodeficiency Virus is sometimes called “cat AIDS” by people who don’t understand it — which, to be fair, is most people. According to the Cornell Feline Health Center, FIV is transmitted primarily through deep bite wounds — the kind that come from territorial fights between unneutered male cats. It cannot infect humans. It doesn’t spread through shared food bowls, grooming, or casual contact. And here’s the part most people never learn: with proper care and indoor living, FIV-positive cats routinely live to 15 years and beyond.
But Keith and Ivy didn’t know any of that yet. What they knew was that this cat couldn’t close his mouth properly, that flies had already found him, and that a vet was now looking at them over a clipboard.
A second diagnosis arrived alongside the first. Cytology confirmed Eosinophilic Granuloma Complex — a group of inflammatory conditions that, in Nicolas’s case, had produced an indolent ulcer inside his mouth. According to VCA Animal Hospitals, this condition causes painful lesions that can make eating difficult or impossible. In Nicolas’s case, every attempt at chewing was agony. That’s why he’d stopped eating. That’s why he’d lost so much weight. That’s why the flies had found him first.
The vets recommended steroid treatment for the ulcer, dental work, and structured nutritional support. None of it was guaranteed to work.
Keith and Ivy said yes anyway.
Here’s where things changed.
The steroids started working. Not overnight, not dramatically — but the swelling in his mouth began to pull back. He could open his jaw without flinching. He took a few bites of soft food. Then a few more. Over weeks that became months, Nicolas started to fill out.
By December 2025 — fourteen months after he first appeared in their garden covered in flies — Nicolas had gained 2.5 kilograms. That’s 5.5 pounds of muscle and fur on a cat who had once been too weak to finish a meal. He was eating dry kibble. He was demanding breakfast.
He had a favourite corner of the house. A warm one.
Keith and Ivy posted about Nicolas’s recovery on Instagram. The video — showing his transformation from skeletal, fly-covered stray to a cat loudly headbutting his food bowl — collected 269,000 views and more than 40,000 likes. Comments flooded in from people who’d never heard of FIV. From people who hadn’t known a cat like Nicolas could recover. From people who started looking at the strays in their own neighbourhoods differently.
Through Nicolas, Keith and Ivy learned more about puspins — how often they’re overlooked, how rarely anyone stops. What started as leaving food out for one sick cat in a garden became something else entirely. They now share their home with nine rescued cats.
Nicolas was the first.
One more thing before you go.
FIV-positive cats are among the most euthanised cats in shelters — often on the day of diagnosis, because of widespread misunderstanding about what the virus actually means for a cat’s life. As Newsweek reported, Nicolas’s story has helped change that conversation for thousands of people who watched it unfold.
FIV is not a death sentence. It is not contagious to humans. An FIV-positive cat who receives regular vet care, lives indoors, and is kept away from potential fights can live a full, comfortable, long life.
Nicolas is proof. He sits in the sun now. He demands kibble at 6am. He chose the warmest corner of the house on his first full day inside, and he hasn’t moved from it since.
He’s still FIV-positive. He’s also exactly where he decided to be.
Does your cat have a rescue story? Drop their name in the comments — we want to hear it. 👇