Friday 1 July 2011

FLUFFY GREY KITTEN NEEDS A HOME & OTHER STORIES

But first, a word of explanation.

About two and a half weeks ago I got an anonymous phone call informing me that a cat had been abandoned at No.1  (we'll call it) Windy Street. (Actually the call had been made on a Monday and I hadn't checked the messages until Wednesday.) I went up and had a look. Sure enough, there was a black and white cat sitting in the window. As I knew the people opposite, I called in. No, they hadn't seen anyone for days going in or out of the house.

Next morning, I rang the RSPCA (which, for overseas readers, is The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and is one of the most well known and largest charities in the country.) They took the details. 

A couple of days later I looked in at 1 Windy St and the cat was still there, now no longer in the window but sitting in a basket at the other end of room. I popped some dried food through the letterbox only to realise a moment later that the living room door was shut and the cat couldn't get at it. Then the people next door (that's 3 Windy St) came out and confirmed that no-one had been there for a week and the last time there'd been any noise was on the Sunday morning with loud music playing till 6.00am.

I kept checking on the cat and it didn't seem to be deteriorating so someone must have been feeding it. Then, today, I got a call from the shop who said the people at 3 had a 9-week old fluffy grey kitten they wanted re-homing and if I went to get it I had to bring it into the shop to show them. They had got the kitten from a neighbour on the other side of the road (where there seem to be a lot of cat owners and I found out later that Andrea had taken two kittens to go and stay with one of our main fosterers.) The lady was giving up the kitten because her four-year old daughter was treating it like a doll and she was concerned the little thing might get hurt. So I took it and showed it to the ladies of the shop who all wanted it to be the shop cat.

The lady also told me that the RSPCA had gained access to 1 Windy St on Sunday. The cat is back on the window.

Here's another photo.

In the previous post I told the tale of the kitten and the adult cat I took for re-homing and that the adult male ended up at the vet's for neutering. He's now called Paddy, is neutered and is around 18 months old with a quiet nature. Here's his photo and another of the kitten that came with him.



Before that I did a piece about a kitten being born, with photographs. There were five all told but only two have survived. The mother couldn't feed them properly and despite a trip to the vet's for an injection to encourage milk production and Carol hand-feeding and going for days without proper rest, two of them died in their sleep at eight days old. The one ginger kitten lasted nine days and I took it to the vets to be put to sleep to end its suffering. I sat their for nearly half an hour, cradling the tiny thing against my chest as it nestled in the palm of my hand.

As of today, Carol is still hand-feeding the two survivors and they seem to be okay. Here they are.

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