There was a kitten by the side of my porch when my daughter came home last night. We live down a lane, next to the countryside and I know every pet in the immediate neighbourhood and this wasn’t one of them.
It ran off when I tried to coax it. It was small, scruffy and badly underfed. That, along with the patchy fur, suggested that it had been dumped.
Last night was predicted to hit -8C. I’m not a cat lover, I have dogs. But I couldn’t let the little sod freeze to death because it had an empty belly, so I raided the dog food and put out a bowl of pedigree wet food in the hope it would come back. Just to get something to eat.
I checked a couple of times and the food was untouched but on the third occasion, the kitten was almost in the bowl trying to eat the now frozen food.
It ran off as soon as I stepped out. That bowl I took to the kitchen to warm up, there were teeth marks in the frozen solids. I filled another and took it out.
When I went to bed, the bowl was empty. Licked clean. So I replaced it with the now thawed food I’d put out earlier.
It hit -10.
On leaving the house today around 4pm to take my daughter to one of her many classes, I noticed the little fellow curled up in the lee of the porch.
It eyed me warily.
I nipped back inside and then crouched and handed it half a sausage I was saving for the dogs. It must have been starving because it allowed me to get near enough for it to snatch the meat and run.
Little steps.
While out and about, I bought some kitten pouches – foil pouches containing wet kitten food. When I arrived back, I looked down the side of the porch and found not two, but four eyes staring back. Two scrawny little kittens curled up next to each other.
So, I filled a bowl with two of the pouches, waved it in front of their noses and rattled it on the porch until they jumped up.
I’ve never seen animals devour food that quickly. So busy were they, that they let me stroke them gently. I could feel every rib; their spines were like mountain ranges above sagging, empty skin and fur.
I emptied another pouch into the bowl, locked the dogs in the living room and coaxed the kittens down the hall and into my pool room (table, not swimming).
I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with them but I’ll be buggered if I’ll let them starve or freeze when there’s warmth and food here.
My entire family but me are allergic to cats and now I’ve let in two.
My wife is going to kill me.
I don’t care.
