Given how much love she now receives as a cat celebrity, it may be hard to believe that, as a kitten, people told her human family that it “wasn’t worth it” to keep tiny Peanut alive.

As soon as she was born, it was clear that Peanut was different from the other kittens.

Born in a litter of four kittens, little Peany was about half the size of her healthy siblings. In fact, she was so tiny that even the vet struggled to get a reading on the scale when weighing her.

Besides being so small, Peanut was dealing with other challenges, too.

She couldn’t latch on and drink her mom’s milk, so she needed kitten formula from a bottle. And there was something different about her face. The right half of Peanut’s nose was missing, along with her right eye. The other eye seemed glued shut, so she couldn’t see through it.

But with plenty of love and care, Peanut got stronger…

With help from biological mom Plop, Peanut’s human parents, Alex and Collin, carefully nursed her through kittenhood.

Eventually, her good eye opened up, allowing her to see the world. Her snaggletooth became more prominent, and she remained quite small despite reaching a healthy weight, but Peanut was thriving. Spirited and sweet, Peanut developed a passion for good food, playing, exploring, and spending time with her family.

While Peanut has some physical limitations, they haven’t slowed her down.

While they have limited her movement in some ways, the defects on one side of her face haven’t slowed Peanut down. She’s found ways to navigate her environment and do just about whatever she wants, no matter what the humans in the family have to say about it!

In one Instagram post, Alex shares that Peanut can’t jump up on the counter, but she’ll take advantage of a chair positioned near it to climb up.

Alex said, “Today I had a chair pulled up near the counter while I was cooking something and when I turned around this is what I saw 😹😭❤️ she almost gave me a heart attack 😂 she is so silly I just can’t describe how much I love her! She was so proud of herself for this lol ❤️❤️❤️”

She’s even become a bit of a daredevil.

In an interview with The Purrington Post, Alex shares that the “naughtiest thing she’s [Peanut’s] ever done would be jumping from our top floor railing (it’s a loft upstairs that hangs over the living room below) and it’s a very far jump. I am honestly so shocked so did not get hurt. Collin said he just saw her coming down and when she landed, she kind of took in the shock and then just went on about her business.”

Today, Peanut is a strong, spunky social media cat-lebrity!

Peanut’s come a long way from her scary start as a tiny, weak kitten who couldn’t even nurse on her own. After Alex created an Instagram account for Peany (at her vet’s prompting), she quickly started to amass a devoted following. Today, she has almost 180,000 followers on Instagram, and her recent 7th birthday post was liked by over 5,000 people.

Reflecting on those who said that it wasn’t worth it to nurse this fragile, lopsided baby to health, Alex tells Love Meow: “A little compassion goes a long way because by giving P a chance I gained one of the biggest blessings in my life today.”

If you’d like to follow Peanut’s adventures and see more of that expressive face, follow her on Instagram @peanytodd!