We have recently been on an emotional roller coaster ride brought to us by a stray mother cat moving her babies to our neighbors yard. A friend recommended that I share our experiences here.
Before we start, let me share with you that we currently have two cats. Both are rescues. Foo, thus named as she was rescued by a future neighbor mewing outside during a typhoon. Once we bought our home, our neighbor pleaded with us to take her as his home was not a good environment for her. Big dogs so Foo had to be kept in a cage which he was not happy to keep her in. That was 13 years ago and she is still with us. Mia was rescued by a coworker and we brought her in to give Foo a playmate during the long hours of work that kept us out of the home. She was the runt of the litter and at 13, she is little bigger than a 6 month old kitten but has the strength of an adult. Her nickname, one of many, is “Half size, double trouble”.
Over a month ago, I heard a kitten mewing loudly. Eventually, it began to sound as if in distress. I looked for the source, but could not find it. The next day, I heard mewing again but this time saw too young kittens , one white, the other brown, playing on a discarded lawn chair in the neighbor’s back yard. Called my wife down and we watched them play for a while. We decided to catch them as we heard them for two days now but had no indication that their mother was around. During the day, a third kitten appeared and finally their mother. Later on, I noticed a 4th kitten. These latter two were dark grey and black, hard at first to realize they were two different kittens until I saw them together.
We were very concerned for their safety and health. The neighbor’s yard is a trash filled jungle and our houses are on a busy street. Further, our town and prefecture have efficient animal control measures. When they catch stay animals, the cages are loaded onto a truck that gasses them on the way to the incinerator. But how do we catch them?
First, I put dry cat food on the concrete foundation of the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s to lure them into our yard. They took the bait. I put out food and then water as well, progressively closer to our house. Eventually, we left the sliding door open and the food inside. It worked! They came in the house! The food was placed further and further from the door with the plan to close the door once they were all in at the same time. One of the first to enter was who we believe to be the father. If so, he is big for a male cat, double the size of the mother. As she lets this cat close to her babies, I’m thinking it must be the father. He is healthy and is either someone’s pet or is at least a well looked after stray. We were not trying to catch him, but I still let him inside to eat. Glad I did as he later escorted the mother cat in to eat. After which she and her kittens frequently came in. At one point, 3 kittens and the mother cat where in our living room at the same time and I was posted behind a screen by the door ready to close it as soon as the gray kitten came in. The mother cat was wary, and sat near the door watching her babies eat, her tail outside. The gray kitten played with its mother’s tail and did not come in until its siblings exited. While I was waiting for the gray kitten to come in so that I could spring the trap, the brown kitten walked between my legs. While I was disappointed that we were one kitten away from having them all in at the same time so that we could catch all of them I was also highly optimistic that we would be able to shortly. We had been watching them play as kittens do and have stopped eating dinner to prevent scaring them away when they came in to eat for several weeks. We can not keep all of them and my wife had found homes for all, though our son really wants to keep one. We are inclined to let him. He is filled with excitement and anticipation.
That hope was dashed that same night as the neighbors drove them away. The cats had been living under a pile of discarded cartons and planting shelves beneath a window and we are guessing they were being too noisy as the window was slid open and the occupant forcefully shook the cartons and yelled. The next day they cut the weeds around the house where the kittens used to play. We saw nothing of them for a few days. The food and water I put out untouched.
Days later they returned to our yard. Thin, very thin. But rarely together. The brown and white kitten together, either by themselves or with their mother. Same with the black and grey kittens. Rarely saw these two pairs mixed unless all were together. Mother cat would come in, eat a single bite then flee. She would do this several time throughout the day. We saw the kittens but they almost never came it the house and when they did, only in pairs. Mom is smart.
After a month of stable living in our neighbors yard, they became nomadic. After several days of absence, they would return looking frailer each time. Yet, still too fast to catch. Suddenly we started hearing almost nonstop mewing and discovered the brown kitten behind our fence, apparently abandoned. It was extremely thin, its eyes were all gunked over, but we could not catch it. After two days of putting food and water out for it and trying to catch it, I discovered that they were all staying under another pile of junk in our neighbors yard. The mother did not abandoned her kitten but left it home when she went out with the others. Received but only a little. While she had not abandoned her kitten, she was obviously unable to care for it. I found it sleeping next to the neighbors car and tried to catch it. It woke up just in time to scurry under the junk pile. Unbelievably, I found it sleeping in the same spot a short time later the same day and tried to catch it with my son’s butterfly net. Again, it got away.
That night being cool, we had the windows open. The kittens were mewing loudly and eventually they were doing so in our yard. I got dressed and went down stairs. Looking out the sliding doors, right there on the other side of the glass was one of the dark kittens. The situation for them was now dire and I decided that we would try to save all we could, even if just one. Grabbing the butterfly net, I went out to try to catch it. As a sneak around the corner, there is the sickly brown one coming right for me! I get the net positioned and at the last moment, the kitten turns away to under a bush beside the fence. Knowing where they are now staying, I position the net in front of the most direct route for it to take to get there. As soon as I did, I see it walking along the fence foundation…above the net. Before I could do anything, it walked behind the fence. I quietly run to the other end, where it has to come out to get “home”. It never comes. Looking around, I finally find it sitting just inches from where I last saw it, behind a fence post. Knowing I am likely to get bit, I grab it. Got bit, twice, but I had it…the I didn’t! Have no idea what happened. It was in my hand, biting and scratching me and then it wasn’t. All kittens are now ourtof our yard, mewing here and there around the neighborhood. I wash and dress the bites on my hand and go to bed at 2:30am but do not sleep well.
The next night I see the mother cat moving her kittens across the busy street in front of our house. I try again to catch them with my son’s butterfly net but the side walk is narrow and they quickly escape into neighbors’ yards. I am certain that this is the last we will see them. Driven away by our neighbor and I making three failed attempts to catch them, I can not believe she will bring her family back. We left the next night for a two night camping trip. The day we left was the hottest of the year up to that point. I left out water and food for them but both was untouched when we returned. Our son asked if the kittens would be alright.
The next day, a week ago today, I hear the unusual, birdsong like call the mother cat gives to call her kittens and run down stairs. They are all here!. Mother cat nursing them under our tree just feet away from our door. They are all so pitifully thin. I finally learn that our town lends out live catch traps for cats. Wish I knew of this earlier. I get one and our concerns were realized, we catch the mother cat first. When first caught, the black kitten was next to the cage. I saw the gray cat looking on as I bring the cage inside. This is highly unusual. Only the white kitten ever made eye contact with me and not run away. After a visit to the vet that night, we buy a travel cage for her and, we hope, her kittens to share. She is as calm as a stuffed animal through out the night.
Foo and Mia are not happy. Though we keep the stray cat in a room that they are not allowed in, they know it is here. Foo starts marking her territory again, urinating in the foyer and just outside her litter box. Twice in one day.
We come up with the brilliant idea of using the mother cat as bait for her kittens. I thought it best to keep the cage inside with the screen door shut. Wife thinks it best to put it outside so I bring it outside and position it and the trap so that the kittens must enter the trap to see mom. The mother cat goes wild. Jumping and knocking the cage around, tripping the trap. This is not going to work, so I slide open the door to bring the cage back in, the cat jumps at the sound and exited the cage like a rocket through the side. I stand in shocked disbelief. What just happened!? By jumping, she popped the zipper apart! Wife and I are dejected the rest of the day. How is our son going to take this?
When he gets home fromm school, I told him, “We have bad news.” He immediately responds, “The mother cat escaped!?!?” He was very disappointed. I had reset the trap and this time covered it with branches but did not expect her to return. Surly, this experience would drive her away for good.
Returning home from an errand that night with my son, I told him that we did not expect to see them again but we still hoped they would be back, so we should be quite as we go up the approach so that we do not scare them if they do. As we get near the house, I can not believe my ears, I hear meowing! There is the mother cat, near the cage and through the branches covering the trap, I see movement. We caught a kitten! The black one. Glad to have her, but she is the healthiest of the four. Still very concerned for the others, especially the brown one.
We bring it in and I reset the trap. That was last Wednesday. Very hopeful now. That night the mother cat comes by and makes eye contact with me. Thought she would run at the sight of me. Thursday and no cats nor kittens during the day however, a horrendous sound that at first I took to be a bird fight comes from outside. It starts and stops again and again for a while. Suddenly, it changes and I think that a kitten got trapped wrongly and is hurt. Rushing out side, I am certain it is a kitten crying out in pain but it is not from the trap. The sound is coming from the jungle of my neighbors yard. It is loud, terrible and the whole neighborhood responded either by looking out their windows for the source or closing their windows. It is obviously some kind of animal attack. The cries increase then abruptly stop and I see a large cat jump over the fence on the far side of the neighbor’s yard. Did I just hear a kitten being killed? I do not know but I believe so. I keep checking the trap though, hoping that I am wrong and we still have the mother and at least 2 other kittens out there. Just moments after I checked the trap, I look again and the mother cat is in it again. Now, we are stoked. We might actually be able to catch the whole family. I take both mother and black kitten to the vet. learn that as suspected, the mother has worms, probably the kitten too. Get special food and medicine for both.
The mother cat is dehydrated. The travel cage we bought for her accommodates a drinking bottle that I bought separately. My attempts to teach her and the kitten to use remain unsuccessful and they keep knocking over the water dishes we try. So I come up with the idea of setting out food and water in the bath room. Japanese bath rooms are designed for the entire room to get wet. Ours is plastic through out. First, I put the food dish and water dish on opposite ends of the bath tub. Then I put the kitten in to give it the first chance to eat. It doesn’t. After a while, I think that perhaps, if I put the mother cat in she will provide an example for her kitten. In that I was correct, but the example she gave was not what I hoped. After a few moments of sitting quietly, she went absolutely berserk. She jumped for the window sill, missed knocking over the food dish as she landed, jumped again, wild eyed, panting as she tried to escape through the screen. Falling many times as I tried to catch her, the water dish was also upset and with cat and kitten jumping the cat food and water quickly became throughly mixed “mud” that they splattered and smeared all over the whole bath tub, walls, window, screen, themselves and me. In her panicked attempt to escape, the mother cat ripped out one of her claws. Seeing as she would eventually get through the screen or seriously hurt herself trying, I had to shut the window, which given the heat of the day, presented problems.
Donning leather work gloves, I gave first the kitten and then the mother a bath. They were surprisingly docile. Our pet cats become berserkers themselves when bathed, which mercifully has not been necessary in many years. Back in the travel cage, I was free to dig out cat food from the drain. I had plugged it, but in their panicked jumping they pulled it out. After saving as much food as I could, I washed the bath room but it still reeked of canned cat food, blood and scared cat. I took a shower and washed the bath room again but the scent, much less pronounced remained. The next day I burned a smudge stick in the bath to get rid of the smell.
Over the weekend I see the gray kitten’s tail above the concrete block foundation of our fence and am relieved as it was that kitten that I thought I heard being attacked. Something did not seem natural though and the thought of it being the carcass of the kitten being carried off by another animal came to me. I think this is the case as I checked yesterday and found the concrete blocks too high for any part of the kitten’s tails to appear above them, especially most of the tail as I saw .
Then no kittens. No one is eating the food I leave out nor drinking the water. Even the father cat and those that used to pass through before the cat family moved in are making their appearances. I walk around the neighborhood looking but mainly listening. No sign Thursday nor Friday except for the attack I heard Thursday. The food and water I put out remains untouched. I put out more food all around the house and even by the road hoping to lure them back. Thinking they might be across the road, I walk around the neighborhoods on both sides of the street. Nothing. We have to return the trap tomorrow and we discuss asking for an extension. Sunday night, my wife suggests we go across the street and ask our neighbors.
By chance, we meet a woman Monday morning as she is leaving her apartment building and she has stories to tell. A brown kitten had been around there. It had fallen into a drainage ditch and could not get out. Mewing loudly, one of her neighbors looked out the window, saw it and rescued it from the ditch but left it out side. As we walk around the area, we are certain we can hear a kitten mewing but can not find it before we have to return home for Zoom meetings. After mine ends, I return and I hear it louder now. I keep looking through the overgrown banks of the ditch and finally see an emaciated brownish kitten. It is now too frail to escape, though it tried to. This is not the brown kitten that I was so worried about earlier, the one that walked between my legs in my home when it was still relatively healthy. We had noticed a couple of weeks before that the mostly white kitten had turned mostly light tan and the brown kitten became brown and white tiger stripped. It turns out, that the kitten I caught earlier in my hand was the formerly white kitten. Even in the dark, I was confused by the color patten of the kitten I caught as it did not match that of any of the kittens from last we saw them. It is a bag of bones, has fleas, its eyes swollen mostly shut and gunky. Got lots of medicine for it. Seeing it sleep soundly, most likely for the first time in a week, is a much needed rewarding sight. At this moment, it is nursing.
Really high with success and hope of finding the remaining two alive, I had temporarily forgotten the attack I heard. Still able to hear faint mewing in the area of the ditch, I kept going back there yesterday. “Am I really hearing a kitten mewing?” I still do not know. My wife went out with me and could not hear it. Too faint for me to say that I am actually hearing it. But I am not hearing it anywhere else, so I keep going back there to look.
The ditch is about 5 feet deep with straight concrete sides. There are concrete members across the top that are like railroad ties in size and spacing. Worrying for the kittens should they fall down there, I have looked into it several times over the weeks. It is now full summer here and the vegetation obstructs the view. Where is the sound coming form? Is there any actual mewing coming from here after rescuing the kitten? AH! I think I heard it again, certain of it. I keep looking, winding my way through the bushes. Some thing in the shallow water catches my eye but only because it is different from what little else I can see. At first, I pay no attention to it as it obviously is not a kitten. I keep hearing a faint mewing. Is it in my head, I can not tell. The water falling through the drain at the end of the ditch, the road traffic, kids playing are all playing havoc with my hearing. Rotating my head back and forth trying to catch the direction from which this sound is coming from I lean further over the railing and something catches my eye and my heart sinks. One a concrete tire stop in the ditch is what looks just like the right hind leg of a cat and the identity of the item that earlier catches my eye is immediately understood. The brown kitten’s remains. Moving closer, between bikes in the bicycle parking of the apartment, I am able to make a closer inspection which confirms my fears, just feet from where I rescued its sibling a couple of hours earlier. The animal attack I heard Thursday and the unnatural movement of the gray kitten’s tail afterwards immediately comes to mind. The look on the gray kittens face, that last time I would see it, as I took its mother inside is heartbreaking to remember. We have all that remains of this wonderful little family of kittens and their mother. The other two are no more.
I was going to go ahead and return the cage today as it is no longer needed, but my son is expecting us to have until tomorrow, so I will keep it set up through today and wash it tonight to return tomorrow. If he asks, we will tell him that we hope someone else rescued the other two kittens.
While all three of the survivors can eat the same food, the mother and the white kitten require medicine mixed with theirs and they have different medicine. This causes a scheduling problem as I must temporarily separate them to ensure they eat the food with their correct medicine and that the black kitten does not eat any of the medicated food. I want to keep them together as much as possible but can not until the two eat their own food.
The black kitten hisses each time I approach the cage, when it is uncovered. She does allow me to pet her though, stretching her neck out so that I can scratch her chin. After a week of high energy food, she is healthy looking and acting. The white kitten purred last night when I pet it as it sat next to its mother. I am so happy that I could reunite them. It is hard to separate them for feeding.
Yesterday, the mother cat took to lying down in the litter box, which her kittens replicate. Not want we want, but not much we can do. However, my wife decided to do something about it and prepared a box and put it on the shelf of the brand new, two story cat cage we got for them. Without saying anything, she decides to pick the mother cat up to put it in the box . As soon as she got the cat out of the cage it goes berserk and scratches the hell out of her, including her face. She just got back form the doctor. Got an infusion of antibiotics and a tetanus shot. They redressed her facial wounds, which are already discharging puss. She needs to return tomorrow for another antibiotic infusion and they may have to cut out tissue from her face.
Before we start, let me share with you that we currently have two cats. Both are rescues. Foo, thus named as she was rescued by a future neighbor mewing outside during a typhoon. Once we bought our home, our neighbor pleaded with us to take her as his home was not a good environment for her. Big dogs so Foo had to be kept in a cage which he was not happy to keep her in. That was 13 years ago and she is still with us. Mia was rescued by a coworker and we brought her in to give Foo a playmate during the long hours of work that kept us out of the home. She was the runt of the litter and at 13, she is little bigger than a 6 month old kitten but has the strength of an adult. Her nickname, one of many, is “Half size, double trouble”.
Over a month ago, I heard a kitten mewing loudly. Eventually, it began to sound as if in distress. I looked for the source, but could not find it. The next day, I heard mewing again but this time saw too young kittens , one white, the other brown, playing on a discarded lawn chair in the neighbor’s back yard. Called my wife down and we watched them play for a while. We decided to catch them as we heard them for two days now but had no indication that their mother was around. During the day, a third kitten appeared and finally their mother. Later on, I noticed a 4th kitten. These latter two were dark grey and black, hard at first to realize they were two different kittens until I saw them together.
We were very concerned for their safety and health. The neighbor’s yard is a trash filled jungle and our houses are on a busy street. Further, our town and prefecture have efficient animal control measures. When they catch stay animals, the cages are loaded onto a truck that gasses them on the way to the incinerator. But how do we catch them?
First, I put dry cat food on the concrete foundation of the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s to lure them into our yard. They took the bait. I put out food and then water as well, progressively closer to our house. Eventually, we left the sliding door open and the food inside. It worked! They came in the house! The food was placed further and further from the door with the plan to close the door once they were all in at the same time. One of the first to enter was who we believe to be the father. If so, he is big for a male cat, double the size of the mother. As she lets this cat close to her babies, I’m thinking it must be the father. He is healthy and is either someone’s pet or is at least a well looked after stray. We were not trying to catch him, but I still let him inside to eat. Glad I did as he later escorted the mother cat in to eat. After which she and her kittens frequently came in. At one point, 3 kittens and the mother cat where in our living room at the same time and I was posted behind a screen by the door ready to close it as soon as the gray kitten came in. The mother cat was wary, and sat near the door watching her babies eat, her tail outside. The gray kitten played with its mother’s tail and did not come in until its siblings exited. While I was waiting for the gray kitten to come in so that I could spring the trap, the brown kitten walked between my legs. While I was disappointed that we were one kitten away from having them all in at the same time so that we could catch all of them I was also highly optimistic that we would be able to shortly. We had been watching them play as kittens do and have stopped eating dinner to prevent scaring them away when they came in to eat for several weeks. We can not keep all of them and my wife had found homes for all, though our son really wants to keep one. We are inclined to let him. He is filled with excitement and anticipation.
That hope was dashed that same night as the neighbors drove them away. The cats had been living under a pile of discarded cartons and planting shelves beneath a window and we are guessing they were being too noisy as the window was slid open and the occupant forcefully shook the cartons and yelled. The next day they cut the weeds around the house where the kittens used to play. We saw nothing of them for a few days. The food and water I put out untouched.
Days later they returned to our yard. Thin, very thin. But rarely together. The brown and white kitten together, either by themselves or with their mother. Same with the black and grey kittens. Rarely saw these two pairs mixed unless all were together. Mother cat would come in, eat a single bite then flee. She would do this several time throughout the day. We saw the kittens but they almost never came it the house and when they did, only in pairs. Mom is smart.
After a month of stable living in our neighbors yard, they became nomadic. After several days of absence, they would return looking frailer each time. Yet, still too fast to catch. Suddenly we started hearing almost nonstop mewing and discovered the brown kitten behind our fence, apparently abandoned. It was extremely thin, its eyes were all gunked over, but we could not catch it. After two days of putting food and water out for it and trying to catch it, I discovered that they were all staying under another pile of junk in our neighbors yard. The mother did not abandoned her kitten but left it home when she went out with the others. Received but only a little. While she had not abandoned her kitten, she was obviously unable to care for it. I found it sleeping next to the neighbors car and tried to catch it. It woke up just in time to scurry under the junk pile. Unbelievably, I found it sleeping in the same spot a short time later the same day and tried to catch it with my son’s butterfly net. Again, it got away.
That night being cool, we had the windows open. The kittens were mewing loudly and eventually they were doing so in our yard. I got dressed and went down stairs. Looking out the sliding doors, right there on the other side of the glass was one of the dark kittens. The situation for them was now dire and I decided that we would try to save all we could, even if just one. Grabbing the butterfly net, I went out to try to catch it. As a sneak around the corner, there is the sickly brown one coming right for me! I get the net positioned and at the last moment, the kitten turns away to under a bush beside the fence. Knowing where they are now staying, I position the net in front of the most direct route for it to take to get there. As soon as I did, I see it walking along the fence foundation…above the net. Before I could do anything, it walked behind the fence. I quietly run to the other end, where it has to come out to get “home”. It never comes. Looking around, I finally find it sitting just inches from where I last saw it, behind a fence post. Knowing I am likely to get bit, I grab it. Got bit, twice, but I had it…the I didn’t! Have no idea what happened. It was in my hand, biting and scratching me and then it wasn’t. All kittens are now ourtof our yard, mewing here and there around the neighborhood. I wash and dress the bites on my hand and go to bed at 2:30am but do not sleep well.
The next night I see the mother cat moving her kittens across the busy street in front of our house. I try again to catch them with my son’s butterfly net but the side walk is narrow and they quickly escape into neighbors’ yards. I am certain that this is the last we will see them. Driven away by our neighbor and I making three failed attempts to catch them, I can not believe she will bring her family back. We left the next night for a two night camping trip. The day we left was the hottest of the year up to that point. I left out water and food for them but both was untouched when we returned. Our son asked if the kittens would be alright.
The next day, a week ago today, I hear the unusual, birdsong like call the mother cat gives to call her kittens and run down stairs. They are all here!. Mother cat nursing them under our tree just feet away from our door. They are all so pitifully thin. I finally learn that our town lends out live catch traps for cats. Wish I knew of this earlier. I get one and our concerns were realized, we catch the mother cat first. When first caught, the black kitten was next to the cage. I saw the gray cat looking on as I bring the cage inside. This is highly unusual. Only the white kitten ever made eye contact with me and not run away. After a visit to the vet that night, we buy a travel cage for her and, we hope, her kittens to share. She is as calm as a stuffed animal through out the night.
Foo and Mia are not happy. Though we keep the stray cat in a room that they are not allowed in, they know it is here. Foo starts marking her territory again, urinating in the foyer and just outside her litter box. Twice in one day.
We come up with the brilliant idea of using the mother cat as bait for her kittens. I thought it best to keep the cage inside with the screen door shut. Wife thinks it best to put it outside so I bring it outside and position it and the trap so that the kittens must enter the trap to see mom. The mother cat goes wild. Jumping and knocking the cage around, tripping the trap. This is not going to work, so I slide open the door to bring the cage back in, the cat jumps at the sound and exited the cage like a rocket through the side. I stand in shocked disbelief. What just happened!? By jumping, she popped the zipper apart! Wife and I are dejected the rest of the day. How is our son going to take this?
When he gets home fromm school, I told him, “We have bad news.” He immediately responds, “The mother cat escaped!?!?” He was very disappointed. I had reset the trap and this time covered it with branches but did not expect her to return. Surly, this experience would drive her away for good.
Returning home from an errand that night with my son, I told him that we did not expect to see them again but we still hoped they would be back, so we should be quite as we go up the approach so that we do not scare them if they do. As we get near the house, I can not believe my ears, I hear meowing! There is the mother cat, near the cage and through the branches covering the trap, I see movement. We caught a kitten! The black one. Glad to have her, but she is the healthiest of the four. Still very concerned for the others, especially the brown one.
We bring it in and I reset the trap. That was last Wednesday. Very hopeful now. That night the mother cat comes by and makes eye contact with me. Thought she would run at the sight of me. Thursday and no cats nor kittens during the day however, a horrendous sound that at first I took to be a bird fight comes from outside. It starts and stops again and again for a while. Suddenly, it changes and I think that a kitten got trapped wrongly and is hurt. Rushing out side, I am certain it is a kitten crying out in pain but it is not from the trap. The sound is coming from the jungle of my neighbors yard. It is loud, terrible and the whole neighborhood responded either by looking out their windows for the source or closing their windows. It is obviously some kind of animal attack. The cries increase then abruptly stop and I see a large cat jump over the fence on the far side of the neighbor’s yard. Did I just hear a kitten being killed? I do not know but I believe so. I keep checking the trap though, hoping that I am wrong and we still have the mother and at least 2 other kittens out there. Just moments after I checked the trap, I look again and the mother cat is in it again. Now, we are stoked. We might actually be able to catch the whole family. I take both mother and black kitten to the vet. learn that as suspected, the mother has worms, probably the kitten too. Get special food and medicine for both.
The mother cat is dehydrated. The travel cage we bought for her accommodates a drinking bottle that I bought separately. My attempts to teach her and the kitten to use remain unsuccessful and they keep knocking over the water dishes we try. So I come up with the idea of setting out food and water in the bath room. Japanese bath rooms are designed for the entire room to get wet. Ours is plastic through out. First, I put the food dish and water dish on opposite ends of the bath tub. Then I put the kitten in to give it the first chance to eat. It doesn’t. After a while, I think that perhaps, if I put the mother cat in she will provide an example for her kitten. In that I was correct, but the example she gave was not what I hoped. After a few moments of sitting quietly, she went absolutely berserk. She jumped for the window sill, missed knocking over the food dish as she landed, jumped again, wild eyed, panting as she tried to escape through the screen. Falling many times as I tried to catch her, the water dish was also upset and with cat and kitten jumping the cat food and water quickly became throughly mixed “mud” that they splattered and smeared all over the whole bath tub, walls, window, screen, themselves and me. In her panicked attempt to escape, the mother cat ripped out one of her claws. Seeing as she would eventually get through the screen or seriously hurt herself trying, I had to shut the window, which given the heat of the day, presented problems.
Donning leather work gloves, I gave first the kitten and then the mother a bath. They were surprisingly docile. Our pet cats become berserkers themselves when bathed, which mercifully has not been necessary in many years. Back in the travel cage, I was free to dig out cat food from the drain. I had plugged it, but in their panicked jumping they pulled it out. After saving as much food as I could, I washed the bath room but it still reeked of canned cat food, blood and scared cat. I took a shower and washed the bath room again but the scent, much less pronounced remained. The next day I burned a smudge stick in the bath to get rid of the smell.
Over the weekend I see the gray kitten’s tail above the concrete block foundation of our fence and am relieved as it was that kitten that I thought I heard being attacked. Something did not seem natural though and the thought of it being the carcass of the kitten being carried off by another animal came to me. I think this is the case as I checked yesterday and found the concrete blocks too high for any part of the kitten’s tails to appear above them, especially most of the tail as I saw .
Then no kittens. No one is eating the food I leave out nor drinking the water. Even the father cat and those that used to pass through before the cat family moved in are making their appearances. I walk around the neighborhood looking but mainly listening. No sign Thursday nor Friday except for the attack I heard Thursday. The food and water I put out remains untouched. I put out more food all around the house and even by the road hoping to lure them back. Thinking they might be across the road, I walk around the neighborhoods on both sides of the street. Nothing. We have to return the trap tomorrow and we discuss asking for an extension. Sunday night, my wife suggests we go across the street and ask our neighbors.
By chance, we meet a woman Monday morning as she is leaving her apartment building and she has stories to tell. A brown kitten had been around there. It had fallen into a drainage ditch and could not get out. Mewing loudly, one of her neighbors looked out the window, saw it and rescued it from the ditch but left it out side. As we walk around the area, we are certain we can hear a kitten mewing but can not find it before we have to return home for Zoom meetings. After mine ends, I return and I hear it louder now. I keep looking through the overgrown banks of the ditch and finally see an emaciated brownish kitten. It is now too frail to escape, though it tried to. This is not the brown kitten that I was so worried about earlier, the one that walked between my legs in my home when it was still relatively healthy. We had noticed a couple of weeks before that the mostly white kitten had turned mostly light tan and the brown kitten became brown and white tiger stripped. It turns out, that the kitten I caught earlier in my hand was the formerly white kitten. Even in the dark, I was confused by the color patten of the kitten I caught as it did not match that of any of the kittens from last we saw them. It is a bag of bones, has fleas, its eyes swollen mostly shut and gunky. Got lots of medicine for it. Seeing it sleep soundly, most likely for the first time in a week, is a much needed rewarding sight. At this moment, it is nursing.
Really high with success and hope of finding the remaining two alive, I had temporarily forgotten the attack I heard. Still able to hear faint mewing in the area of the ditch, I kept going back there yesterday. “Am I really hearing a kitten mewing?” I still do not know. My wife went out with me and could not hear it. Too faint for me to say that I am actually hearing it. But I am not hearing it anywhere else, so I keep going back there to look.
The ditch is about 5 feet deep with straight concrete sides. There are concrete members across the top that are like railroad ties in size and spacing. Worrying for the kittens should they fall down there, I have looked into it several times over the weeks. It is now full summer here and the vegetation obstructs the view. Where is the sound coming form? Is there any actual mewing coming from here after rescuing the kitten? AH! I think I heard it again, certain of it. I keep looking, winding my way through the bushes. Some thing in the shallow water catches my eye but only because it is different from what little else I can see. At first, I pay no attention to it as it obviously is not a kitten. I keep hearing a faint mewing. Is it in my head, I can not tell. The water falling through the drain at the end of the ditch, the road traffic, kids playing are all playing havoc with my hearing. Rotating my head back and forth trying to catch the direction from which this sound is coming from I lean further over the railing and something catches my eye and my heart sinks. One a concrete tire stop in the ditch is what looks just like the right hind leg of a cat and the identity of the item that earlier catches my eye is immediately understood. The brown kitten’s remains. Moving closer, between bikes in the bicycle parking of the apartment, I am able to make a closer inspection which confirms my fears, just feet from where I rescued its sibling a couple of hours earlier. The animal attack I heard Thursday and the unnatural movement of the gray kitten’s tail afterwards immediately comes to mind. The look on the gray kittens face, that last time I would see it, as I took its mother inside is heartbreaking to remember. We have all that remains of this wonderful little family of kittens and their mother. The other two are no more.
I was going to go ahead and return the cage today as it is no longer needed, but my son is expecting us to have until tomorrow, so I will keep it set up through today and wash it tonight to return tomorrow. If he asks, we will tell him that we hope someone else rescued the other two kittens.
While all three of the survivors can eat the same food, the mother and the white kitten require medicine mixed with theirs and they have different medicine. This causes a scheduling problem as I must temporarily separate them to ensure they eat the food with their correct medicine and that the black kitten does not eat any of the medicated food. I want to keep them together as much as possible but can not until the two eat their own food.
The black kitten hisses each time I approach the cage, when it is uncovered. She does allow me to pet her though, stretching her neck out so that I can scratch her chin. After a week of high energy food, she is healthy looking and acting. The white kitten purred last night when I pet it as it sat next to its mother. I am so happy that I could reunite them. It is hard to separate them for feeding.
Yesterday, the mother cat took to lying down in the litter box, which her kittens replicate. Not want we want, but not much we can do. However, my wife decided to do something about it and prepared a box and put it on the shelf of the brand new, two story cat cage we got for them. Without saying anything, she decides to pick the mother cat up to put it in the box . As soon as she got the cat out of the cage it goes berserk and scratches the hell out of her, including her face. She just got back form the doctor. Got an infusion of antibiotics and a tetanus shot. They redressed her facial wounds, which are already discharging puss. She needs to return tomorrow for another antibiotic infusion and they may have to cut out tissue from her face.