Kitten Catastrophe!

Because I work at an animal hospital, and because my coworkers know I live on a farm, I often get "volunteered" to take unwanted cats from clients.  It doesn't happen that often, and please don't think people are being cruel.  Its usually the case where they have taken care of a stray out of the goodness in their hearts, and then this stray has kittens and they realize they got themselves into trouble.  Last year I had three of these cases and they all had quite different stories.

The first cat I adopted was a sweet little black momma cat who I named Betty. She came to me with her 4 kittens who decided to live in the fruit tray of an old refrigerator in our tool shed.  Unfortunately, one night a raccoon killed all of the kittens but one. The one kitten left is an adorable little male tiger kitty, which Seth affectionately named Tony Stewart after his favorite Nascar driver. 

Betty

Tony Stewart...he's a little shy

 

The second adoption case I got was not such an enjoyable experience.  One of the Doctor's I work for unknowingly volunteered me to take a stray cat and apparently this cat was quite wild.  The doctor told me "there's a cat for you to take home. Oh, by the way, I couldn't get it into a cage, so it's loose in the food room." I walked into the room expecting it to be a challenge to catch this cat, however, nothing could have prepared me for the ninja cat that would jump from shelf to shelf over my head.  After 10 minutes of huddling in a corner while this crazy cat (dubbed Wilma) sank its claws into every surface possible in the room, including my scalp, I decided it was time to man up.  I grabbed a blanket and threw it over the cat who was between 2 bags of dog food and scruffed her until my knuckles were white.  Either the cat was A. mad or B. afraid I didn't have a tight enough hold on her so she decided to turn her head and sink her teeth into my arm (I'm gonna go with option A.) When I got home with Wilma, I tried to move past our fight earlier in the day and nicely let her out of her cage into the nice warm tool shed. As soon as I opened the door, she ran out and headed straight for the corn field, but not without turning and hissing at me before heading into the abyss. When my arm puffed up twice its normal size with pus oozing out of the bite wounds for 5 days, I didn't really care much what her fate was.


My last cat case were two mamma cats who both had kittens.  They were living in our cellar, but as soon as it was warm enough, Seth was sure to kick them outside.  This spring I noticed one of the mama cats was pregnant again.  The other day she was waddling around looking as if she were about to pop.  The next day I couldn't find her so I assumed she was off somewhere having babies.  I was cleaning the house and decided to be a good wife and burn the trash, a chore I normally leave for Seth.  As the fire began to take off, I started to hear tiny little mews. The kittens WERE IN THE FIRE! After pulling my eyes back into their sockets, I began a heroic quest to save the poor kittens.  I can happily say that all 5 kitties came out unscathed from the fire, however, the poptart box their mom had put them in did not survive the Great Fire of 2012.  They are adorable and look just like their dad, Tony Stewart. They now reside in a box on the porch and they are doing fantastic!