I invited my new pal Anna to dinner last night. She’s come from her home in Athens, Greece, to visit her son and his family, who are my lovely next door neighbors. I met her only last week, but we hit it off instantaneously. When I answered the door, Anna looked frantic. Out walking, she heard meowing and tracked the sound to a trash bag, where she discovered a kitten that couldn’t be more than a couple of weeks old. She took the kitty to her son’s house, cleaned it up and fed it milk through a syringe. But, Anna wondered why there was only one kitten in the trash bag. Was there something wrong with it that prompted a cruel person to throw it out? Returning to the trash bag down the street, she heard more meowing but came to my house first. Out we ran to rescue the second kitten.
The garbage bag was filled with leaves, branches and dead sunflowers. Anna rooted around with her hand and found the second kitty, but we heard more meowing coming from the bag. Emptying the contents on the sidewalk, we met the third sibling! Back at my house, Anna cleaned up our guests, while I found a box for them and lined it with a towel. Anna dashed to her son’s house to retrieve the syringe so she could feed them.
Anna is returning to Greece on Monday. And tempted as I was to keep one of the kittens, I knew I couldn’t properly take care of it since it would need to be cared for like an infant. That would mean frequently feeding it special milk (our homogenized milk wouldn’t provide the proper nutrition), burping it after each meal (yes, burping it), helping it go to the bathroom, and regulating its body temperature! BTW, I’m not a kitten expert. Anna and Google filled me in. In the interest of transparency, I could surely tend to the kitten if I had to. I didn’t want to.
While Anna and I had dinner we decided the best thing to do was to take the kittens to the 24-hour animal hospital that took care of my dog and my son’s cat when they were sick. Anna’s daughter-in-law, who was caring for the third kitten, wanted us to take it to the hospital, too. She and Anna’s son have a 19-year-old cat and a two-year-old, so it wouldn’t have been practical for her to keep the kitchen either.
At first, the nighttime employee at the animal hospital didn’t want to take our rescued kittens, but she changed her mind when she opened the box and saw them. She filed a police report since it’s illegal to dump a living animal into a trash bin. I’m not quite sure what that was going to accomplish since it would be pretty difficult to find out who did the dirty deed.
We left the three babies with one of the vets. We knew they were in good hands.