AREN'T WE GORGEOUS!

Meet Vito the Bionic Cat and sweet little Rae: two pets who prove you don’t have to be perfect to be lovable

- SANDY COOK & KIM ABRAHAMS

TOUGH times call for a hearty dose of the feel-good – you know, something to tug at the heartstrings, make us all warm and fuzzy inside and forget about the woes of the world for a little while.

And you don’t get more feelgood than tales that involve creatures furry and four-legged – especially when those tales involve overcoming adversity and emerging with plenty of cattitude and a paw-fect outlook on life.

FIRST up is a feline that hasn’t only used up a chunk of his nine lives but has become something of a puddy-tat blade-runner in the process.

The drama started when Vituzzo – or Vito the Bionic Cat, as he’s known to his thousands of Instagram followers – was hit by a car in December 2018 while his owners were on honeymoon.

“[He has] lost a paw and risks losing the other, without which he couldn’t live,” newlyweds Silvia Gottardi and Linda Ronzoni wrote on social media at the time. Silvia is a former women’s premier national basketball league player, while Linda is a graphic designer and art director.

The couple, who are from Milan, Italy, returned home immediately and their beloved pet was prepared for surgery. The procedure to attach two prostheses by inserting them directly into his remaining upper leg bones had never been performed successfully on an animal in Italy.

As Vito recovered, his moms started an Instagram page in his name with the hashtag #vituzzosuperstar, and followers came pouring in.