December 14th of 2014, I decided to stream one evening to raise funds for my cat. I couldn't speedrun anything, I was brand new to streaming, and I honestly didn't know where to start. About a week before I decided to start my endevour, I came across The-Elite.net out of the blue. At that time, when there was a front page, there was a big article about Illu and how he was setting records in Jungle, and another about Luke setting records on Caverns (if my memory serves). I read all of these articles and just couldn't escape the thought of how cool it would be to speedrun GoldenEye 007 - my childhood game. I decided to start learning that December night.
I had 0 viewers. About an hour went by and the only person I can remember stopping by for probably 30 minutes was my cousin. I was playing Banjo-Kazooie. My stream was even themed with a rough Banjo-Kazooie layout that I whipped up. My bitrate was probably a mean 900-1000 because of how poor our wifi was at the time. On the left side of the layout was a picture of my lifelong buddy. His name's Luigi, Luigi the cat. And right below that picture was a donation goal that read: $0/$200.
Luigi has been my cat for about 12-13 years. It wasn't until 2011 or 2012 that we noticed his eye began to grow puffy and produce mucus. It kinda came out of nowhere. It wasn't until 2013 that I realized what the problem was. Luigi had Trichiasis (truh-ky-uh-sis). Trichiasis is an eyelid abnormality, "in which the eyelashes are misdirected and grow inwards toward the eye". We knew that his eyes were producing a lot of eye-boogers, but we didn't know why. Not until we checked his eyelids. Sure enough, Luigi's eyelashes were growing directly into his eyeballs.
A cat with Trichiasis:
This isn't a picture of Luigi, however, notice how the cat is squinting. This is a picture of a cat with Trichiasis. Luigi looked a lot like that, except a lot worse. After a while, I forgot Luigi's eye color.
I did my research and came to the realization that this condition wasn't a regular cat problem. It's actually most common in dogs. It broke my heart to see him in pain. He was constantly squinting just to see - I could only imagine how irritating it probably felt for him. It probably felt like when you have an eyelash in your eye but multiplied by a thousand. His quality of life was declining day by day and it got to the point where I had to do something. And that’s when I decided to stream on that December night in 2014.
I turned off Banjo-Kazooie and decided to start learning the ropes of speedrunning GoldenEye. In my mind, the best place to start was probably the first level, Dam Agent. In literal minutes I had 3 viewers, and then 4, and then 5. I started to recognize some of these names as RWhiteGoose, homieonice (Luke), Wodahs, and few others. They taught me what 1.2 control style was and then the learning just got easier from there. I don’t know what they saw in me that night, but they continued to watch me - this absolute scrub - fail over and over again on the same level. They kept giving me tips that I kept applying and little by little my time began to improve. Soon enough I got 0:59, and then 0:58, and then 0:56. It was so much fun and the chat was so generous and helpful. I truly can’t describe to you how much fun that stream was. After about an hour of me improving my scrub Dam Agent time, Goose decided to tweet about my stream.
https://twitter.com/RWhiteGoose/status/544324002609901569And that is when everything changed. I don’t know what compelled Goose, or any of the other eliters that joined the stream that night, but within hours people started to pour into my stream. This was my first time streaming with an audience bigger than 2 people, so I was just blown away. The stage was set. As the people continued to watch me, they began to notice the donation goal. It didn’t take long, but somehow, by the pure generosity of The-Elite community, my donation goal wasn’t just met, but it was exceeded. That night, my donation goal went from saying $0/$200 to saying $203/$200.
Overwhelmed. Simply overwhelmed. That’s the only way I can describe the way I felt that night. I was so overwhelmed that there is a VOD of me somewhere where I’m just crying my eyes out on stream. I know people like to exaggerate and claim that certain moments in speedrunning/streaming history exist that are considered the “best moments of all time”, but I am not exaggerating when I say this was the greatest stream I have ever experienced in my lifetime. I know I’m not the only one who would agree. I was a lowly speedrunning noob that honestly had no business playing GoldenEye. It was this community that changed everything for me. Not just for me though, but for my cat Luigi. If you were there to experience that stream, I just want you to know from the bottom of my heart how thankful I am that you took the time out of your evening to watch me. If you donated that night, I cannot thank you enough. I truly cannot express how wonderful that night was for me. But the story isn’t over.
Over 200 dollars. The goal had been met. I kept my promise and the first thing we did was take Luigi to the vet. The doctor came in and looked at him and advised blood work and FIV testing. After the tests came back looking good, she advised that we put Lysine in Luigi’s food for a while and see if the swelling around his eyes would go down. She felt confident it was somehow an immune problem that could be reversed. Well fast forward to later - she was wrong. We took Luigi to the vet again at a later date and were prescribed eye drops. Once again, it didn’t work. Fast forward to now. We had tried multiple medicines and none of them seemed to relieve Luigi of his ailment. It almost seemed like it was getting worse. For me, for my parents, that was the last straw. It was time for surgery.
We went to the vet and showed Luigi to a new doctor we hadn’t met before. She assessed Luigi and almost immediately winced at the sight of his eyes. She knew the only way this was going to be fixed was with a procedure that would remove the ingrown eyelashes. We scheduled the surgery and, after a couple of days, took him back. The surgery had gone perfectly and they were done with him in no time. Recovery would take 10 days and poor Luigi would have to wear a silly cone.
(Luigi is shy)
Ten days (and a lot of meds) later, we took him back to get the stitches removed. Finally, after 6 years of chronic irritation and pain, Luigi had been healed. Completely healed. And none of it would have been possible if it wasn’t for The-Elite.net. This community took its arms and wrapped it around a total stranger and his cat named Luigi and made their lives totally different. Luigi is now showing signs of more activity. When I was 12 years old we used to play together all the time. After this surgery, I was petting Luigi, and for the first time in years he started to play with me again. It was surreal to see him acting like he was 7 years younger.
You all have no idea how thankful I am for you all. I hope this post wasn’t too cheesy, or too long for you to read. From the bottom of my heart, from my family to yours, we want to thank you all so much for everything you’ve done.
Here is Luigi now:
So happy to get that cone off.
Still healing from the stitches, but his eyes haven't been open this wide in years.
Thanks for reading, and God Bless! <3
TL;DR: The-Elite.net helped me, a speedrunning scrub, raise $200+ for my cat to have surgery on his eyes and become completely healed of Trichiasis (a condition where his eyelashes were growing into his eyeball).
