After the 2 feral moms and their combined 8 kitten fostering adventure of 2021, I had to promise up and down to the 2 people I split the mortgage with that I would never foster again.
But us true animal folks know that us simple humans don’t get to make that choice. Animals tend to pick us and not the other way around.
Since I manage my local cat colony, I keep the Nextdoor app on my phone in case someone’s lost pet shows up at one of my feeding stations. I try to avoid pursuing it for anything since it’s such a crap-shoot between the rare bit of useful info and piles of ranting garbage but I saw a post 3 weeks ago from a lady trying to figure out what to do when she saw a pregnant cat at a local mechanic.
I could totally relate to her, since our city and county don’t do anything to curb feral populations, and your heart breaks when you see a pregnant mama on the streets. I told her I could try to trap the cat, but my only option would be to take her to the vet for a spay/abort since every rescue I know is full and there is no place for this mom to have her litter. It not great, but it’s better than ignoring the situation and more and more homeless kittens being born in the gutter.
I was worried if the cat was pregnant at all, or super far along and would have babies before I could get to her.
Today, in the midst of a bunch of random fireworks going off (why this town sells fireworks on every corner in the middle of a drought is beyond me) I drove to the mechanics shop 10 minutes away hoping I would catch this cat and be able to take her to the vet I had a feral fix voucher with to take her him early tomorrow morning.
The trap was out for all of 5 minutes when a sweet Siamese kitten wriggled under the chain link fence to check out the bait. A tortie kitten was quick on her heels. This was not quite what I expected. Siamese kitten walks into trap and starts chowing down. Tortie is so hungry that she hangs around (normally cats flee when the trap springs). I grab a towel and an extra can of food and lure the tortie to a wall and am able to snatch her up with the towel. They are both small enough I am able to open the trap and put her in the trap with her sister for safe transport back to my house.
0 mama cats, but two 6 week old kittens.
The pics don’t really do them justice. They got a flea bath and were pretty stressed out. Im impressed that they both started to purr and relax when I was flea combing them. The Siamese is slightly bigger and bolder than her tortie sister and they are going to be really sweet pets once they settle in.
The problem is I still need to find a foster home for them! The non-cat fostering faction of the house has granted these two a very temporary stay. So any cothers in so cal want to foster these young ladies? Or heck just adopt them outright?
These little babies are special- I’ve never had a cat jump into a trap that fast. They knew they wanted out of that parking lot between a mechanic shop and a liquor store - they braved the noise of a crazy 4th of July riddled with random fireworks to say “take me! I’m scared but get me outta here”