A Hopeless Mother with Kittens Saved

Meet Petunia, Posey and Peeko!

Tonight, my mind still reels with thoughts of what happened today.  How could it be, that I would be there, at the exact right moment, when that spot where I was, was nowhere I should have been?

Today began with the usual cleaning and chores and good intentions to do my walk, which has become part of my routine and I enjoy my walks.  I walk for an hour, sometimes longer, depends on how my feet hold up.  I'm wearing sandals, because I can walk in my sandals with my toes free roaming.   If it's too cold I wear socks. When it's raining and freezing, I don't wear my sandals.

I have trouble finding shoes that fit.

So I wear sandals instead, since sandals don't have to fit that well, to be ok.

Then my Corvallis friend calls and says she'll be over at 3:00, do I want to go out?  Of course I want to go out!

She comes, we go for coffee, then sit around a bit, wonder what to do and suddenly my friend asks if I'll show her Millersburg.  Um, Millersburg?  There's like development houses and City Hall and nothing else, I think.  There's nothing to see!

But off we go.  I am telling her directions, she's driving her car.  We make the turn down Alexander, so I can show her where Sam and Oci came from, the old trailer  now gone, lot sold, a new street  there and development houses.  It's all development houses, by the freeway.    But, they don't go far back before the houses break and its country again.

I direct her over to Conser, pointing out places I got cats fixed and I got hundreds fixed in Millersburg.   So I want to show her where Jade came from, the house miles out, on the corner, where a year after I got 15 or more cats fixed, they had called me again, to say another had come along and she had kittens.

I trapped cats all along Conser, and then when you get way out there, there's a right turn you can take onto another road, along which I'd fixed so many cats.

Well we got down to that corner, and it was dark by then, and my friend made the corner, and slammed on the  brakes.   In the middle of the road, there was a cat and behind her, two kittens.  She did not move, when we rounded the corner and came right at her and didn't move now, as we sat in the car, headlights glaring on her, but she was alert.  Two kittens milled a couple feet from her, more towards the edge of the road.

My friend and I stared at each other.  Why wasn't she moving, what was going on?

Then I recognized the look in her eyes---hopelessness.  She didn't know what to do anymore.  She'd been dumped, with kittens.  What the hell was she going to do?  Nothing she could do.  She looked for all the world like a cat in shock, a cat who had given up, a cat resigned to death.

It was freezing outside.  She and her kittens were alive in fleas.  There would be no help for her from the houses nearby.  I knew that already because I knew those houses from long ago.

Maybe she's already tried and knew there was no help there.   And nobody else for miles.

And it was cold and she was hungry and she had kittens and there was no hope at all.

But there was hope.   My friend and I would never in a million years drive around her and away.   NEVER!  A car had come up behind us.  A pickup.  He was in a hurry and not happy we'd stopped in the road.  He revved his engine and roared around us nearly clipping the cat in the road as he zoomed off.  If he had been ahead of us, he would have creamed them all and probably not even stopped.

But he wasn't ahead of us.  We'd stopped ahead of him, and so when he went around us, they were not killed.

I got out quickly, and picked up the two kittens immediately.   The black mother cat had still not moved from her sitting position a foot to one side of the center line.  The man came out of the corner house.

I said "Do you remember me?  I got all those cats fixed for you years ago.  Are any still alive?"

"Only one,"  he said, "and it's a barn cat."

"One," I thought.  I was thinking how happy I am that I took Jade out of there.  She's still alive.  I said, "I still have Jade."   He made no answer.  I said "Do you have a carrier?"  "No," he said.

"How about a box?"  I asked.  He went off to find one, and returned with a small cardboard box.  I put the two kittens inside it and then the mother.  She was completely silent.  I walked back to my friends car and got inside.  She got out then, with her flashlight and searched in case there were more kittens but found none.

The three were crawling in fleas and quiet.  I petted the small young female as my friend drove us home.  She had the heat on to warm them.

I put them into the cage in the garage because they have too many fleas to bring inside.  I flea treated them immediately and gave them food, and they began to eat and they ate off and on for hours, in between naps atop heated frisbees on soft blankees.  Petunia, the young mom, began to purr and knead and laid out on the soft blanket and was so relieved to be safe.

She'd been on guard for her kittens, growling softly at any noise, still worried for them despite her terrible predicament.  Now, at last, it was over, her ordeal.  She was out of the cold and there was food before her.  Now she could sleep.

Her fleas are dying and that is hard on her, annoying as they wiggle in death and drop and there are thousands on the three.  Tomorrow I will change out all their bedding and brush them and flea comb out all the dead fleas.

My Portland rescue friends are taking them in.  I asked immediately on facebook once I got them settled and she said yes.  I was so relieved because with that group, they have me take them directly to the vet clinic up there.  I think about what if they have feline leukemia, but I won't think about that, because it doesn't matter.  Even if they do, at least they will not die out there in the middle of that cold and heartless country road in the dark.

Peeko,  the boy kitten, is already playing with a toy mouse.

It's so strange.  How in the world did everything converge on so many tangents that we would be there, just at that time, and not a moment later?