Mandi Howard couldn’t help but tear up when picking up her “baby” to take home for the first time.

In his short life, the kitten has already experienced the best and worst sides of human behaviour — from unimaginable cruelty when he was flung out of a car on the highway to unconditional love from a stranger who not only rescued him on the side of the road but saw him through a long and painful recovery.

“The moment I saw him, I just started crying,” said Howard, a 32-year-old emergency room nurse.

But this time, they were happy tears. After recovering from broken bones and a split lip over nearly two months, Potter was finally ready to go to his new home on Thursday afternoon.

“He’s perfect,” Howard gushed.

She renamed the kitten Potter from Pedro after Harry Potter, “the boy who lived.” Potter’s “foster mom” at the Toronto Humane Society even dressed him up like his namesake for the pickup, complete with custom black-rimmed glasses and a lightning bolt.

“We are delighted that he has a forever adoptive home,” said Makyla Deleo, a spokesperson for the Humane Society.

The River St. Humane Society building was where Howard headed after picking Potter up off the highway when he was just eight weeks old on Dec. 6.

His stay was lengthy because of how extensive his injuries were, explained Deleo.

“Most of his toes in his back feet were broken,” she said.

There was no magic medicinal fix for that — just cage rest. Now that his fractures have healed, Deleo said she doesn’t anticipate any further problems.

“He’s just a happy little kitten at this point,” she said.

Although he’s able to move freely he isn’t as active as other kittens, said Howard.

“You can tell he’s still trying to get used to not having the cast,” she said.

But he still follows her around the house, purring and looking for opportunities to cuddle. That’s made it hard to leave Potter behind, even to go to work, said Howard.

But he’s already made some friends. Potter joined a household with two other cats and Howard says they are all getting along “beautifully.”

“It’s as if he has always been there,” she said.

Howard will be taking him to the vet on Monday to see if there are any niggling issues to manage and she’ll be footing the bill for it, despite raising more than $9,500 in an Indiegogo campaign for that purpose.

The campaign was started by Radhika Subramanyan, Howard’s friend and confusion over where the funds would go resulted in a fraud complaint. Police later dropped the investigation, Howard said.

The Humane Society confirmed police have not pursued the investigation further and Howard said “not one cent” would be going to Potter.

Instead, Subramanyan donated all the funds to various animal care services across the GTA, including a $2,000 donation to the Toronto Humane Society.

She still can’t help but get emotional when thinking about Potter’s ordeal.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“Just to think how close he came to dying,” she said.

“How could somebody hurt him?”