This one goes up to e-Levin!
A Brooklyn Heights animal lover named Anne Levin saved an injured cat huddled on the side of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on Tuesday — making her the second Levin to save a distressed feline from the roadway in recent years, after Councilman Steve Levin made a similarly heroic effort in 2015.
The pair are not related, but are nevertheless united in their passion for keeping cats safe and off busy interstates, she said.
“He seems to be a very strong supporter of animal welfare,” said Anne Levin, who is president of animal-activist group the Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition, best known for running the Cat Cafe on Atlantic Avenue.
Anne Levin bravely ditched her car underneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade in evening rush-hour traffic while hunting for the distressed mouser after receiving a tip-off — easier said than done, because the forlorn furball was in such bad shape that it just looked like a pile of trash, she said.
“She looked like debris because she was so wet and huddled against the brick,” said Anne Levin.
She eventually spotted the animal and was able to wrap a towel around it and get it into a carrier, while peak-hour motorists politely gave the pair a wide berth.
“Everyone was being really understanding and no one was honking, they just quietly went around us,” Anne Levin said.
She immediately brought the furball — now named “Suzy BQE” — to the Park Slope Veterinary Center, where doctors found the cat’s fur had been scraped off her tail and feet, injuries probably sustained after being dragged underneath a car.
Really, the 1-year-old puss is lucky to be alive, Anne Levin said.
“Of all the things that could have potentially happened, she’s very fortunate,” she said. “She’d been out there awhile, she was pretty cold.”
Loretta, the cat rescued by Steve Levin (D–Boerum Hill), was equally beat up — he found it bullet-ridden and pregnant on a Williamsurg stretch of the roadway.
Vets will need to amputate Suzy BQE’s mutilated tail eventually, but she isn’t yet strong enough for the surgery.
The cat will go up for adoption once she is fully recovered, and Anne Levin is banking on finding a safe home where she’ll have many more of her nine lives left to live.
“We’re hoping to find her a home where she’ll stay off freeways,” she said.
But in the meantime, Suzy BQE’s surgery will cost up to $1,000 and the Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition is currently taking donations to help pay for the procedure.
Those interesting in giving money can e-mail brook
