Last Updated on March 25, 2026 by admin
In October 2024, something appeared at the edge of Keith Beja and Ivy Cuebillas’s garden in Manila. It moved slowly — gray, skeletal, drooling onto the soil — its fur matted and crawling with flies. It didn’t run when they approached.
They had never owned a cat.
What they saw was an animal whose mouth was so swollen he couldn’t close it, who clearly hadn’t eaten properly in weeks. His lips were pulled outward. His ribs showed. They went inside and brought him food.
He came back the next day. And the one after that.
Within a few weeks, Keith and Ivy arranged a home-service veterinarian to examine the cat they’d started calling Nicolas. The vet found more problems than expected.
First: Nicolas tested positive for Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, or FIV — a virus that compromises the immune system, spreads through bite wounds in territorial fights, and has no cure. According to the Cornell Feline Health Center, FIV is especially common in stray, unneutered males, and many shelters still struggle to place these cats.
Second: Nicolas had Eosinophilic Granuloma Complex — a painful inflammatory condition that had opened an ulcer inside his mouth. The ulcer explained everything. Every time he tried to swallow, it hurt. The drooling, the weight loss, the flies that gathered where he couldn’t clean himself — all of it traced back to that wound in his mouth. He had likely been starving for months, not because food wasn’t available, but because eating was agony.
Third: several of his teeth needed to come out.
For first-time cat owners, the list was a lot. When the results came back FIV-positive, Keith and Ivy didn’t discuss returning him. They discussed names.
At the Manila Feline Center, Nicolas underwent dental prophylaxis — a professional cleaning — followed by tooth extractions. Veterinarians confirmed the EGC diagnosis through cytology and began steroid treatment to address the ulcer in his mouth. Eosinophilic granuloma complex responds well to steroids in most cats, and Nicolas was no exception.
The ulcer started to close.
He ate his first full meal without stopping partway through.
Fourteen months after Nicolas first appeared in their garden, Keith and Ivy posted a video on Instagram documenting his transformation. It accumulated over 269,000 views and more than 40,000 likes. Comments came in from across Southeast Asia, from Australia, from the United States — people watching a gray, fly-covered shape in an October garden become a healthy, clean-coated cat who looked directly into the camera.
By December 2025, the swelling in his lips had significantly reduced. He was eating dry food again. His coat was clean. According to GreaterGood, Nicolas had gained 2.5 kilograms from the day he arrived.
Nicolas still has FIV. He will always have FIV. But the Cornell Feline Health Center is clear on what that actually means for a cat in a stable home: FIV-positive cats commonly live average lifespans when they have consistent veterinary care and a low-stress environment. The virus doesn’t have to define the life.
What defines Nicolas’s life now is this: he knows the sound of the food bag. He follows Ivy from room to room. He sleeps in Keith’s lap.
And he wasn’t the last one to find their garden. The couple who had never owned a cat in October 2024 now has nine — each one a stray who showed up somewhere desperate and trusted the right people to notice. The full story of Nicolas’s rescue is worth reading from the beginning.
What’s your cat’s name? Drop it in the comments. 👇