Disabled kitten takes first steps with help of a 3D-printed wheelchair

Toronto: A tiny 3D-printed wheelchair developed by two students in Canada has helped a disabled kitten, who lost his back legs shortly after birth, walk again.

Cassidy was born with all four legs, but shortly after birth, he lost his back legs.

Cassidy was found in a forest in British Columbia, by the staff of the Tiny Kittens Society, who didn't know if he would even survive, let alone ever walk again. The kitten "managed to survive somehow for nine weeks, until we found him. He actually had learned how to lift his little bum off the ground and walk like a reverse velociraptor," Shelley Roche of Tiny Kittens told Global News Canada.

Roche put a call out on Facebook to see if anyone could help Cassidy. That is when Josh Messmer and Isaiah Walker from Walnut Grove Secondary School stepped up to make the tiny kitten a wheelchair.

"We modelled the wheelchair in 3D and then it just prints it out," said Messmer. It took a few designs and modifications to get it right, but Cassidy is now able to use it to move around, Walker added.