Shelter kitten can walk again with help from 3D limb

Thanks to 3D printing technology, Sonic the kitten is now bionic.

The 4-month-old homeless kitty was born with a deformity that prevented him from walking normally, forcing him instead to drag his right front leg on the ground. But thanks to the “Sonic Project,” a team effort between the Denver Animal Shelter and the Art Institute of Colorado, Sonic now has his very own custom-fitted prosthetic paw. Without it, the kitten would have developed an open wound that would never heal.

Animals with similar deformities usually have to have their limbs amputated, so the team working on the project was excited to see the results as Sonic tested his new limb Wednesday. The model was the ninth tried over a nine-week period, with the kitten’s growing size a challenge to designers seeking the right fit.

“Most important is having an understanding for how this prosthetic works for a cat,” Louisa Poon, vet at the Denver Animal Shelter, told the Denver Post. “For other animals with these deformities, especially when it affects both front legs, they’re not adoptable and we usually have to euthanize. So hopefully we can learn from this and we can make them adoptable again.”

Sonic is set to be up for adoption Friday at the Denver shelter. The team expects the kitten will reach his full size in another two or three months, when he can then be fitted with his final prosthetic.

“As we’re starting to understand how his mechanics move, we’ll develop more and eventually have a lighter material,” said Gregg Harvey, a professor at the Art Institute of Colorado. “At the end of this, we’ll have a very exotic final product that will fit perfectly to him. This is about getting to apply design skills to somehow better the world.

Animals are innocent — if we can somehow help Sonic, we’re doing a good thing.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 1:52 PM with the headline "Shelter kitten can walk again with help from 3D limb."