Kitten Rescue

After coming home yesterday morning, opting not to sit in the pouring rain at the market, I edited some photos and puttered around the house as the rain moved this way. Checking on a local fb group, someone had posted a video of some tiny kittens playing under the brambles under the bridge.

The woman that posted the vid said they were under the bridge with the black mother cat, but she didn't have anything to catch them with. Being the cat lover I am, I volunteered to go down there and see if I could capture them with some food. While there, another couple showed up, leaving their kids in the car so they wouldn't make a lot of noise, and the dad crawled under the brambles, and just sat there in hopes that the kittens curiosity would bring them to him.

His wife and I sat at another entrance into the brambles, so if they came our way, we'd be there to get them. We were there about two hours, and the kittens had ventured close enough to B and had actually climbed on his leg. But they weren't all that close, so he wanted to wait until all four of them were close enough. We were just quietly waiting.

Across the street, some van comes zooming up, parks, and some woman strides over as if she's in charge. She starts tramping around the area, talking loudly and going down near B. He keeps motioning her away as she's scaring the kittens, talking quietly to try to get her to quiet down. Nope, she's too full of herself it clue in. So she comes and starts talking to me and J, bragging how she got tuna fish to entice the last cat she caught. Big deal. We had soft cat food.

Anyway, she just didn't get it, and went back down to where B was, and we could see she was determined to crash her way through the brambles to him. She came tramping back to us and said she was getting tuna fish. I lost it at that point. I said we had everything under control, we had soft cat food for them, and we didn't need more people tramping around the area, making noise and scaring them. She said she was only trying to help, and I said she should have asked first, if we needed any. She left in a huff.

She wasn't there to help the kittens particularly, she was there because she figured she'd be the hero in saving these cats, and didn't care that there were already people there looking after the situation. Thank goodness she left. Shortly after she left, the kittens gained enough confidence to all climb onto B and he just scooped them into the cat carrier. Mom was nowhere to be seen at that point.

He came out of the bush with the kittens, leaving the soft cat food on the dish. Mom appeared and just wolfed down the food. We put out the other half of the can, but there was no way she was coming near us. The couple left with the kittens and purchased kitten milk (they're about six weeks old), and took them home, where they seemed to be happily running over the kids and parents.

I went back to see if I could catch Mom, but to no avail. I left more food for her and a bowl of water, seeing as others had said they'd seen her drinking out of a puddle. Today, if the woman that said she has a live trap doesn't show up with it, I'll get a live trap and set it for the mama cat in hopes we can catch her and reunite her with her babies.

Fortunately, where she is, she's dry, as she's directly under the bridge, but it's super noisy there, with the echoing of the traffic overhead constantly. Thunder and lightning yesterday afternoon while I was there probably didn't entice her to come out to eat either. Poor thing is starving and not much older than a kitten herself.

I'm glad the other couple were there to take the kittens home, as Sadie would have been most pissed off if I'd have to bring them here. Hopefully, we'll be able to catch mom cat today.