Last week we were contacted by a housing association. We had done some TNR for them last year after one of their estates developed a small group of semi-ferals that on one claimed to own. This time, they asked if we could help with some cats a resident who they evicted had abandoned.
The housing officer said she had been in to the property and found 3 adult cats plus a litter of kittens, although she wasn't sure how old they were. She had bought some food and made arrangements for a neighbour to feed the cats through the letterbox, but she couldn't come down from London until today. So today our Welfare Officer and I arrived, tooled up to deal with all eventualities of course!
But when we got there, the housing officer came out of the house to say she couldn't find the kittens.
The adults - 3 beautiful torties - were there crying for food and were very, very hungry as the lady next door had run out of food the day before. The three of us then turned the house upside down and couldn't hear crying or other evidence the kittens were in the house.
It was spooky as this family had left everything, not even taken shoes, and their breakfast bowls still were sitting on the coffee tables.
Next, we tried looking in the back garden as I wondered whether mum had shifted them outside as they house appeared abandoned. But again, no sign.
What also didn't help is that none of the females appeared to be in milk, which made us feel perhaps the kittens had died or mum had killed them because of the lack of food.
After half an hour of turning everything over, we gave up and started loading the adults into the car. Caroline, our Welfare Officer said she wanted to try one more time to search for the kittens and went upstairs to the bedroom. Something made her roll back the duvet and there they were... a tiny bundle of four 1 week old jet black kitties.
I am so relieved Caroline rolled back the duvet I cannot tell you. Both her and the housing officer had searched that bedroom for at least 20 minutes but had not heard one peep. The house is now locked up waiting for a clearance gang for at least a week now so the kittens would have died left undiscovered.
We took them back to Caroline's house and eventually we did figure out who mum was... but she was so, so hungry she couldn't have been making much milk and although we squeezed her nipples nothing came out. She ate 3 small meals straight off and then to our relief settled down to feed the kittens.
They will be just fine now and are going off to one of our fosterers tomorrow... but I will be having nightmares tonight about what an awful tragedy that could have been!
