BUTLER TWP — The way Nancy Nicklas saw it, somebody she loved very much was dying, so she would do whatever was in her means to save him.

As it happened, that somebody was a 7½-year-old Tonkinese cat named Lexus, and he had been diagnosed with kidney failure, a chronic, fatal condition. He would continue to lose weight, frequently vomit and eventually his body, without a functioning kidney, would give out.

So at the urging of her veterinarian, Nicklas arranged for "Lex" to get a kidney transplant, something she said she would not have done for her other three cats.

The transplant was performed at the University of Pennsylvania near Philadelphia.

The program enlisted the services of a network of universities and animal clinics, set up to benefit both kidney donor and recipient.

It trades the kidney of a healthy male cat without a home, rescued from animal shelters and lab testing facilities, to a cat that needs the transplant.

The catch? Cat owners must adopt the donor cat regardless of the surgery's outcome.

"Save the life of a cat who saves their cat," said Dr. Lillian Aronson, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, who manages donor lists for the program.

It started in the mid-1980s by a veterinarian at the University of California, Davis, who pledged no cat would ever be euthanized in the process.

Aronson said the surgery's success rate is about 94 percent, which has risen since surgery was pioneered and it has spread to five other universities and five animal clinics since. During the past seven years, she said they have performed about 84 surgeries at UP.

The average life span after surgery is three years, but there are some that live seven years and are those that live as long as 10 years, Aronson said.

Kidney transplants are not nearly as successful in dogs, whose immune systems are more complex, said Aronson.

For a cat, a match in blood type and a healthy male donor cat is all that is necessary for the transplant to potentially be a match, she said.

The surgery is expensive: Costs range between $4,500 and $8,000, but Nicklas by chance had purchased pet insurance that covered some of the expenses just before the diagnosis.

The money was minor in comparison to how the surgery has changed how Nicklas and her husband, whose five boys have all grown up and moved out of the house, must live their lives.

"You've got to be willing to give up a lot. It's a lifestyle change," said Nicklas, who must plan to be there to get Lexus to swallow immunosuppressants known as cyclosporine every 12 hours for the rest of his life, or else his immune system will begin to attack the new kidney as a foreign object.

She now works part-time and can no longer travel frequently with her husband to their campsite.

Nowadays Lexus seems more timid, almost frightened of the other four cats whizzing around the house and it is only curled up on Nicklas' lap that he seems at ease. Nicklas explains he always was her cat.

Lexus still has his bad days from time to time. Sometimes the prednisolone, a derivative of prednisone for cats taken to reduce inflammation, gets to him. Or sometimes the cyclosporine is at the wrong levels.

Vance, the donor cat, lives a normal life; Aronson said his remaining kidney will enlarge to provide about 75 percent of the total function of two kidneys.

On Lexus' bad days, Nicklas said Vance, a fat, friendly mixed-breed, will lie by his side, seemingly cognizant their lives are connected.

"They know, they know, they know," Nicklas said.

She said Vance, whose tattooed inner ears still bear evidence of his former life as a nutritional test subject, has adjusted well to life in her home.

"Just the chance to be with human beings, he loves it," said Nicklas. "And leaves, oh man, is he crazy about leaves!" she chuckled.

Nicklas acknowledges there are those out there who won't be able to understand why she would do this for a pet. But she resolutely maintains this was no extravagance; Lexus was an important member of the family.

She credited Lexus for always being by her side when she needed comfort. She said he was there for her when she recovered from almost dying in the hospital from a dye reaction, and he was there when Nicklas mourned the death of her mother.

"When you have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have this creature, a pet, who knows you in ways humans can't ... how do you take that gift? That's a gift given to you and you say, 'OK, I'm just feeding you and you're my animal and you're not worth it.' No, he was exemplary in my life." said Nicklas.

With a shudder she recalled what it was like to see Lexus for the first time after the surgery.

"(Saving him) was so simplistic in my mind, but all his pain, his shaved chest, the IVs running through his body," said Nicklas.

But as the one-year anniversary approaches, Nicklas is convinced she made the right decision.

"To have him here is a gift," she said. "A gift."