Kittens in the Kitchen!

I was happily pottering in the garden about two weeks ago (ignoring the nagging thought that there was a small pile of ironing waiting for me), when a neighbour pulled up outside our gate, hopped out and called to me.......

And what she said made me so angry that I could feel my blood pressure rising and my head getting tight!

'I need your help please', she said 'Someone has DUMPED six kittens at the bottom of the road. Can you please help?'

Well........................
Two minutes later I had grabbed the cat box, hopped in her car and arrived at the end of the road. Another neighbour came out to tell us that she had collected them in case of 'scattering', and had put them safely inside a box, on a blanket. But because she was highly allergic to cats, she did not want to touch them too much and was already itching and sneezing!

And there they were. Six perfect, beautiful kittens. Not newborn, these had wide open eyes, and I put them at between 6 and 8 weeks old. But.... no mummy cat with them. So, where had they come from? By clever deduction we worked out that they must have been dumped there just after 8 o' clock, when Rob and I were sitting in bed drinking our coffee! We actually noticed a strange Security van racing past our house towards the sea, and then literally racing back a minute later..... could this person have been involved?

Back to the kittens. They were tame, very tame actually, so were used to human company and touch. They were happy to be picked up and cuddled, and we put them into our box to take home.

Beautiful babies.

Once in the kitchen Rob and I opened the box and out they tumbled. Three ginger babies, two 'tortie' babies and one feisty dark grey who was growling at everything and everyone. I opened two pouches and they got stuck in with a vengeance. The little dark one growled and chewed and growled and swallowed and five minutes later there were six full tummies. I put the litter box down for them and they knew exactly what to do with it. They climbed in, they scratched about, they squatted and they scraped, they even went so far as to cover up their siblings deposits too!

Rob and I watched them, our feelings swinging from love for them to acute anger and loathing for whoever had just dumped them and left them in a strange place.

Basil and Morris came to see what all the fuss was about. Let me qualify that statement, I think Morris heard the rattle of food pouches and teaspoons against the saucers, but they both took one look and backed out very fast! The kittens ignored them and carried on playing and batting a toy mouse around the kitchen, so Alfie decided to pop in! As one, they stopped, looked at him and became little fuzzy, spitting and growling kittens, walking on stiff legs with tails like bottle brushes! So Alfie left too!

Tempted as we both were (yes, Rob too), we knew that we could not keep them, so we made the sad decision to take them to the local SPCA that has just opened and is run by lovely people. I know that they will be looked after and that they will hopefully find loving homes. To this day I shall never understand how someone can just load up a little family, drive somewhere and throw them away. I suppose we have to be grateful that they were not dumped in the sea, or the middle of the road. But..... if you are going to dump them, for goodness sake behave with some compassion and take them to a place of safety, like an animal shelter. I would love to dump the person responsible for this in the middle of a desert without food, water or shelter.

And if you happen to see someone walking with difficulty, scratching and twitching in the vicinity of his/her underwear, then you will know that you are looking at the guilty person.

Rob put a curse of a million fleas in the delicate area.

My curse was far more violent and graphic......