We got a FB message from someone here in town about a young mother cat (Peaches) and her only kitten.
They were living on a back deck but – dogs in the neighborhood. Dogs that were none too fond of cats and it was considered a high risk environment, especially for a kitten who didn’t even have her eyes open yet.
We had four bottle babies at the time (see the entry on Ozzy, Dipstick, Blue and Clem), and so – we decided to take a chance and snag these two, hoping that the nursing mother would adopt the four bottle babies we were already working with.
That did not go as planned. Although the initial report was that Peaches was “fairly friendly” we found her to be one part demonic entity and one part Tasmanian Devil. She immediately tore through the living room like a fuzzy tornado, desperately seeking an avenue of escape before hiding under Jennifer’s chair.
When she didn’t come out to eat all day, I got worried about her kitten and went to get the poor thing – When I pulled her out from under her chair, her little eyes had opened and she meeped at me in curiosity. Mom watched the kitten go and you could tell something shifted. Although we put the kitten back in the living room after giving her a bottle, mom wanted nothing further to do with her. Kitten was our responsibility now, and mom was DONE.
We kept Dandelion in a condo in the living room with her mom (still hiding under the chair) that second night, but…Dandelion told us that she had made up her baby kitten mind. We had a camera in the living room to monitor both, and little Dandelion, on her unsteady legs, had crawled out of her condo, sauntered up to the door separating the living room and bedroom and YOWLED at the door until we opened it.
We prepped a bottle and fed her and that was that. From then on, she stayed in the heated kitten condo in our room.
Peaches – we’re feeding her every day but I haven’t even seen her since getting the kitten on day one. She’s wild and we’re going to try to find a barn for her to work (she would make an exceptional barn cat). But that’s a fight for tomorrow. For now, Dandelion has a Freedom Ride on the books and we’ll get Mamma Peaches squared away as well.
