We have tiny little snub-nosed features. Our mommy gave birth to us under the house and she kept us till she couldn't take care of us any longer, then one by one she brought us up on the front porch and waited for a hooman to see us. We try to trot down the hall and instead stagger as we go because we're so little our leg muscles haven't developed enough strength yet to keep us going in a straight line. Our eyes are big, round, grey-blue saucers, our pink feet soft and with gentle little claws on the ends of our stubby toes.
The Kentucky Cat House started taking in an excessive number of stray cats about the same time the two daughters and one female cousin reached an age when they could beg and whine and plead with their mom to take them in. And because mom's a softie, she took them in.
She gave them a home in spite of the fact that she works at a near-minimum wage job and supports three kids and a handicapped person who won't leave. I'm that house guest, and I'm trying in the only way I know how, to help her.
First there was Muffy, who was adopted from the real cat lady up the street, as a favor. He was a sweet red cat that we all loved. He got run over by one of the cars that zoom up and down the Animal House Road out front.
So then came Tiger, the sweetest little guy on the planet, and so much personality! He was about nine weeks old when he was abandoned at the sports field nearby and the weather chased him up on the porch. He lived at the Animal House for about a month, charming us all with his people-friendly, loving personality and his tricky quirks of surprising you wherever you were, peeking out from behind whatever, then pouncing. And then he died. Sigh, the best cat on earth ...
*mourn*
Around the same time, Malibu and her brother came to live here. The cat lady and her daughters took them in as a favor to the crazy cat lady up the street. The boy kitten, whose name I don't remember, was a friendly, lazy, kinda stupid fellow. Not that stupid, though, since he had enough sense to move out at around six months of age. Malibu was and remains certifiably insane, one of those nasty cats who loathe all humans. Some people feel sorry for such cats; I can't get all worked up over them except that now and then I remember to pity them.
This particular cat grew up in the house from six weeks of age and she has no excuse for acting so hateful toward the people who raised her--unless having a teenage girl run at you twice a day, screaming your name and stomping her feet as she chased you (pretending to want to catch you but really just spooking you off because she resents the fact that you don't like her or anyone else) is an excuse. Otherwise the cat may just as well have been feral. She hated everyone and whenever she was in the house, hid from sight. Her motto was, "Feed me then get the hell away from me."
Malibu was never spayed. The Cat Lady never has anything spayed; spaying costs seventy-two* dollars (I originally posted "over a hundred dollars" but apparently someone lied to me about the cost) here, and there is no county program to help people afford to cut down on the reproduction rate. So Malibu had her first litter at the usual age, roughly nine months after moving in. Three darling little black and white kittens, but at around three weeks they started to weaken and then they died. We had no idea what made them fail (we didn't even know the term "failing kitten syndrome"), just that all three of them were growing very weak, and within just a few days of one another they died. I'd never seen anything like that. Everyone was very sad, but it was accepted as the nature of things
Then Spotch arrived. One of the most beautiful cats I've ever seen, she's a short-haired calico of the "bright patches" variety. Her color isn't all mixed together as in most calicos, but arranged like orange and black patchwork on her snowy white fur, hence my nicknaming her "Spotch". She has a beautiful face though her olive green eyes ought to be orange, in my never-to-be-humble opinion. Other than that she's one awesome cat. She's quiet, likes laps, but only climbs partway into your lap, stopping when just her head and shoulders have arrived and laying her head down to be scritched. And she catches mice, which is a very good thing to have if you happen to live out among open fields in a trailer which beckons to the field varmints to "come live with us".
Spotch had six kittens in her first litter. She had a nice, roomy box in my bedroom closet right next to my desk and they lived there as infants. Their nursing stressed the young mama till she was nothing but bones. Several times I caught her carrying the runt of the litter--an astonishingly ugly kitten with giant bat-ears and eyes way too big for her face that earned her the name Gizmo after the ugly little beastie in "Gremlins". She jumped out of the box with Gizmo clamped firmly in her mouth and took her under a dresser, where she left her. I think I rescued that one and another kitten at least eight times.
We tried to feed the mom all the food she needed but it became obvious she was trying to kill off some of them before they killed her. I bought formula and started dropper-feeding Gizmo to try to relieve some of the stress on Spotch. A few days later I added the other runt to the dropper-buffet.
They were beautiful kittens. Two calico fuzzballs, a black one named Kiss because it had white streaks on its face in reverse of the band's makeup, a couple of greys with white tuxedo patterns, and a grey tabby, all with very big blue eyes with a sparkle in them. Once I looked over at the box and there they all sat looking at me, six pairs of huge ears and six pairs of giant, round eyes in almond-shaped faces, so bloody cute I had to tell everyone online with me how precious they were.
They were about three or four weeks old by then and wobbling around in their cute little "I don't know how to walk yet but I'm learning!" way.
But then it became obvious that Gizmo was growing weaker. In light of the mother's dilapidated condition, the fact there was a bully or two in the litter who kicked everyone off whichever nipple they had, and the attempt of the mom to assassinate this particular baby suggested to me that she was just undernourished, so I kept feeding her while I searched online to see what I could do, but none of the symptoms seemed to describe what was happening.
None of the kittens had ever had any shots (animals around here don't get vaccinated, there's no money for it) so I wondered if they didn't have distemper. I had seen a case of distemper once when I was very young; my mom bought a puppy that died shortly after of distemper. This didn't look like distemper but not everyone gets sick in the same way. But the cases described on the internet also didn't match the poor kittens' problems.
The others got sick. Assuming that their mother wasn't producing enough milk, I started dropper-feeding them too, but the formula ran out and I couldn't afford to buy more. Five of them died within the next week, and while I cried and hugged the last kitty, Gizmo (who was so endearing because of her determination not to die!) I finally ran across this post on a pet care site: "My kittens have fleas! Help! I don't want them to kill my kitties but what shall I do? They're only three weeks old, too young for flea poison, and I don't know what I can do about it!"
Fleas! Fleas kill kittens?! I was shocked. Not one of the vet sites had mentioned fleas as a cause of death. Even now I can search the internet for "failing kitten syndrome" (which is what they had, now that I know the term) and don't often find any mention of fleas. Had I known fleas were killing the kittens I would have known where to look for a solution. The only cure I knew for flea infestation was "wash them in Dawn liquid dishwashing detergent" but I didn't know what I should do when the fleas ran to the head, whether the soap was to be left on (and get licked off by the mum), or how long they needed to soak and so forth. I get paralyzed by stuff like that even before I start, but I would have tried something if I had known they were dying from the fleas.
Well, one of the people answering the question on fleas told her to wipe the queen and kittens down with alcohol. Easy peasy. The only concern I had then was what to do about getting the little kitties drunk from alcohol fumes, but a little brain damage (for a cat) is hardly worse than dying! So I got a cotton ball and alcohol and swabbed little kitty down. By this time she was the only one left. (I still feel extremely guilty over the others dying from my lack of knowledge about it.) She surived, and has grown up to be a beautiful adult with a very sweet, very quiet personality.
Aaaaand she just had her first litter (four babies) and deposited them in a space under the bushes against the foundation of the house.
Mama Spotch had another litter four months later. She is the most prolific queen I've ever heard of. Second litter, five kittens. Five beautiful pairs of eyes looking out at you from the box. Two were boys, three were girls. The boys got adopted. And needless to say, the girls did not. One of them remains here, and will probably start having kittens soon.
In the mean time, Malibu's second litter has grown up. One got adopted as a kitten, two stuck around here. The boy is a big, beautiful black tom with white toes and a few stray white hairs. He's rather friendly but very demanding and pretty aggressive when the food bowl is out.
His sister is a charming but not very friendly white kitty with black spots in her coat. I have never seen a cat that looked like this. If I had caught a white cat and sprayed her (incompetently) with black spray paint at close range, not moving the can but just shoot ... shoot ... shoot ... and leaving big circular spots of black, that's what this kitty looks like, so I call her Spraypaint.
Spraypaint was an indoor cat till recently, when almost all the cats got banished to the outdoors. So she had her first litter somewhere, then brought them up to the porch after they had opened their eyes and ears. They were maybe four weeks old when we first saw them.
The cuteness quotient in those babies was utterly amazing. Huge round eyes, ears bigger than their faces, clumsy at walking, but scooting down the hall looking like wind-up toys, a leg churning away at each corner, and with little triangular stumps an inch and a half long for tails.
A family friend dropped by to adopt one of the three month olds, but when they saw these little round-eyed angels, they had to take at least one of those home, too. Yes, they were that cute. So one of the boys left, one of the girls got killed by some wild animal, and two remain. Jake, a little scruffy grey who just loves people but loves food even more, and his sister Carly (I'm ashamed to admit to these godawful names from the current teenage rage literature) are sweet, friendly, playful, charming.
There is a very odd sort of tortoiseshell queen. As a four-month old stray who hung out at the cemetery, she hopped into the cat lady's car and came home with her. The cat lady was well on her way home before she discovered the quiet little kitty sitting in her back seat. Not wanting to drive her back to the cemetery and dump her (which would probably have been against the law anyway), nor wishing to take her to the pound, she brought her on home, wondering all the way what possessed her to bring another female cat home. She named her Rose after her late mother, whose grave she was visiting that day.
So we have Spotch, Malibu, Spraypaint, Gizmo, Lady GaGa (a female from Spotch's second litter, now old enough to start multiplying), and Rose sitting in the front yard waiting for some tom to come along and make eyes at them. Too young to breed are Jake and Carly, plus Pounce and her brother (two of Rose's kittens)--but they'll be along soon.
Eight breeding females, four kittens. We have no money to spay the females, and that's why I'm sending this appeal. Would you consider donating to help us send the ladies to the vet, so they don't have to have the huntsman up the street use them for target practice? I asked the cat lady's son if he would put his paypal link on this page. I believe he has done that. It would be very nice of you.
I believe we would start with Spotch, who tends to have large litters. She is quite young and will probably keep reproducing as fast as any queen can, until she dies of the strain and leaves twenty daughters behind her.
I don't know where the saying about rabbits multiplying like crazy came from. We never needed to look past our feline friends for such a metaphor. Only these don't multiply like rabbits, they're more like tribbles.
Please give it some consideration.
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