HELLO! I'm Xiomaro, and I'm lightening-quick!! I've even been called a little spitfire! I'm a five month old kitten who is full of energy and full of life. There's only one hitch - and it's a biggee. I have a congenital heart defect. To be specific, I have a condition called Pulmonic Stenosis which is a narrowing of the master blood vessels that runs away from my heart and to my lungs. This narrowing can overload my right ventricle and cause my heart muscle to swell and increase in size.

It all started with a simple heart murmur. The doctors at the League noticed that my heart seemed irregular. When I would play and get excited, (which was all the time), you could literally feel my heart pounding underneath my chest.

I saw a special heart doctor called a veterinary cardiologist, and they said that I'm going to need heart surgery. The operation has a funny name - it's called a balloon valvoplasty. Basically this will open up the narrow blood vessel so that blood can flow back to my lung again. This operation is going to save my life. Whew!

Thanks to North Shore Animal League America's Help Me Heal Program, I can get the surgery I need to get better - and even more so - to stay alive. Soon, I'll be able to run around again without everyone trying to calm me down and make me relax. Relaxing is boring for a kitten. There's nothing we love more than running and jumping and acting crazy ... well, except maybe swatting a poor, unsuspecting dog. We want to jump and paw at stuff and knock things over. Ahh.... I can't wait to get back to all of that.

Right now I'm on medication to keep my heart rate stable, and next month, I'll get more tests to see how my heart has progressed. And then finally, when I'm a little older and stronger, I'll get that surgery.

In the meantime, I'm looking for a foster care home to keep me healthy and happy until my big day. Would you like to foster me?

Thanks to Help Me Heal and all the people that support this life-saving program, I'll be able to get back to being a kitten again. Thank you, Help Me Heal, and thank you friends of the League. Without your love and continued support of this program, so many of us would not be able to enjoy the quality of life we deserve.

Please continue to mend so many little hearts.

Please continue to Help Us Heal.

If you would like to foster or adopt Xiomaro, please contact Jeni at: jenir@nsalamerica.org.