Wha-wha-wha-wha-whaWhat would you do?

I have a little story to tell you. A Kitten Story.

A few weeks ago, Greg picked me up from work and took me home so that we could get ready to go out to see a show at a local University. I was excited about it because I knew it'd be good, and Greg hadn't seen "Into the Woods" before. We were going with two friends who were meeting us at the theatre, so all we need to do was get dressed and scarf down some chow. As I was hopping around the closet, throwing on 12 different outfits as I am wont to do when preparing to leave the house after 7:00 p.m., Greg came into our bedroom with his head tilted and his brow furrowed.

"Do you hear that?" he asked as I fell into a bureau while pulling up a pant leg.
"Hear what?"
"That. Listen." So I stood stock still with one leg in the air and one arm through a sweater... and I heard some strange timbred mewing.

I melt when faced with kittens in need. A kitten in need puts my personal "crisis" center in overdrive with a big "RED ALERT" siren and flashing inner lights. So I quietly and ever-so-gracefully staggered towards the source. I located all three of our cats, and determined that none of them were outright meowing although I had the fleeting thought that perhaps one of them had learned to throw their voice just to play with me. Eventually I figured it was probably coming from the alley on the left side of our house. (We have a free standing house, but it's about 4 feet (or less) away from the houses on either side of us.)

I scrambled to get dressed while Greg, somewhat reluctantly searched for a flashlight. I barely threw on a coat, and raced out to stare down the alley. Inside a long 4 inch pipe (that has been there since we moved to this house) there was a little tiny kitten face staring out at me and meowing her little head off, no momma or siblings in sight.

I had to save her.

Forget about the fact that we had to leave for a three hour show in less than 15 minutes and I hadn't eaten anything yet. It was cold outside, and this kitten was literally asking for help.

Now, it occurs to me that cats - or at least stray kittens - are really really dumb. At least to me it seems like they'd get a lot more good stuff in life if they flaunted the whole "I'm cute and Lovable" thing rather than hiding all the time. This one did not even want to listen to my well-reasoned argument. She'd meow and look all pathetic, and then every time I tried to get near her, she'd scrabble all the way back into this 10 foot long pipe. I got out tuna fish and tried to use that as a lure, but she wouldn't come out.

Eventually my husband started getting a touch impatient and I was encouraged to get a move on the other things I needed to be doing. But, before we left for the show, I'd put out a cardboard box with a towel and left the can of tuna fish in it.

The kitten was still in the pipe when we got back, and so we tried one more thing to get her out - by picking up the pipe, which was not easy! But Greg picked up the pipe, and then like a tiny furry canon ball, out shot a kitten. And I missed catching her. I could have sworn she ran underneath our car, but we couldn't find her anywhere. Greg checked under all the cars in the street, twice.

We left out the tuna fish and, mainly out of laziness, we left out the cardboard box and towel.

We didn't see the kitten for weeks.

Then, one night, I started hearing meowing again and considering all three of my cats were doing that creepy "I'm watching you" stare, close-mouthed, at the time... I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

The whole inner-Kitten-alarm makes me a little bit of an impetuous idiot, but it seemd logical at the time to go outside in freezing weather with no coat and a flash light to sit on the porch swing, convinced that if I could just get the kitten to come to me, she'd fall into my lap - grateful and purring.

Of course, I'm thinking of my own emotionally-needy cats and I wasn't considering how unlikely this reaction would be coming from a wary street urchin. I sat out there for about half an hour anyway. It helped that I put out another can of tuna fish about six feet in front of where I was sitting. The kitten actually hopped up onto the porch and stared at me from about 10 feet away, but she wouldn't even venture the extra 4 feet to get to the can of delicious smelly food.

I'm sure it DIDN'T help that all three of my cats were staring out the glass front door completely fascinated by the miniature version of themselves.

I went inside, and formulated a plan. Let me state, for the record, that Greg was NOT happy with me. He wanted to eat dinner. Our (homemade) pizza was getting cold! Salad was ready! Shouldn't we just eat? The kitten would be fine.

I couldn't eat. I gave him that look - you know the one - and he sighed and went to go get the cat carrier, as requested. We shoved the outdoor towel and the can of tuna into the cat carrier and positioned it so that, if the kitten should enter, we would be able to grab the top of the carrier, lift it into a vertical position, and zip the front shut before she could say "Mrow".

I sat inside, staring out the door watching and waiting for the stupid kitten to find her way INTO the cat carrier, which took a while. She kept getting distracted by the smell of the tuna wafting through the mesh side - completely confused that she couldn't actually walk in that way. More than one person in my neighbor hood now thinks I'm a total creepy freak for sitting alone on the floor, inside and staring out at the street, at night, while eating mozzarella and tomatoes.

All the while, Greg kept asking annoying questions like "What are we going to do with it if you catch it?" and "What if it has fleas?" and "What if it gets OUR cats sick?". And of course those were all completely irrelevant. We would confine the kitten in the bathroom, we would try to get it a place in a no-kill shelter, we'll confine our cats to our bedroom so that they can't even sniff at each other under the door - No contact, no sickness. It'll be fine!!!!

And after snatching a very bewildered kitten up into the carrier, that's exactly what we did.


Let's zoom in, shall we?


That, my friends, is a little kitten butt. My nephews have a very similar thought process when playing hide and seek.


She was doing her best to become one with the linen closet.

We left her in the bathroom for a bit to calm down, so that I could look up information about local shelters and a what-to-do when you've caught a stray kitten. Since it was night, none of the shelters answered the phone, and the one I really wanted to take her to (Animal Friends - If you live in Pittsburgh and you want a pet - look 'em up, they're amazing!), suggested contacting other shelters and/or Animal control. I'm not even sure how they take strays in in the first place... so I was starting to get depressed.

I found a little guide on what to do if you find a stray cat or kitten and decided it sounded reasonable, so we followed it. First order of business? (UNLESS the kittens are super young and still with their mother) Give the dirty little urchin a bath.



We put a washcloth on the bottom of the sink so that she wouldn't freak out at being on a slippery wet surface.


She was none too thrilled with us. And yet, probably because of the completely terrifying situation, she was very compliant.

Dirty dirty dirty.
Do you see those black suds?
Yea.
We washed her little head last because I feel like that's probably the most traumatic part.

When the water finally started to run clear, I wrapped her up and towel dried her off. Then I held her in a towel straitjacket while Greg clipped her nails. While clipping her, we found that her little toes were raw and scabby, so we were extra careful.


Eventually she seemed to calm down even more, and started acting like she actually enjoyed being held and rubbed and dried and petted.


After she was at least towel dry, we fashioned a nest of old towels in one side of the bathtub and put food and water on the other side (both dry food and tuna). And we sat and watched her watch us for a while. For the rest of the night she didn't budge out of that nest of towels.

At some point we went to check in on her, and while sitting and staring Greg wondered aloud if maybe his co-worker would want her. R is a young guy who's hung out with us before, lives alone in a cats-allowed apartment, and has recently been expressing a whole lot of interest in adopting a kitten. It was totally fate. Greg called him and R immediately accepted!!

At first I was worried, but any doubts about a too-good-to-be-true situation have since been put to rest. R got all the supplies he needed and did a ton of research on his own. He had a next day vet appointment for her (and it IS a her) and she'll be getting spade sometime soon. She had fleas (For the record - I thought fleas were supposed to be tiny, but at some point while drying her, Greg and I saw a huge bug crawl across her nose and APPARENTLY that was a flea. Scary.) and ear mites. The fleas are taken care of and the ear mites should soon be gone because for the first 4 days of medicating her ears, R thought he just had to rub the solution around her ears and not actually put the drops in her ears. A rookie mistake, and hilariously cute. He'd picked a name out for whatever kitten he was going to adopt before he'd even met this little one - Moggy. It's a British term for a domestic mutt cat.

It certainly fits her.

Her (previously burnt) paws are all healed. She's learned to use the litter box. She's romping and playing and happy and safe. And Greg is pretty pleased with himself that we did actually rescue, bathe, and rehome a kitten despite his "our food will get cold" protests.

So here's to Moggy and R, I wish you a long happy life together.