Lucky kitten
Ever thought you’ve tempted fate?
We have worked regularly over the years with a caring chap who looks after a cat colony in West London. Having mentioned in a phone call that we hadn’t heard from him in a while – yes, you’ve guessed it – the very next day he rang to say he’d just found a tiny kitten crying loudly and obviously hungry. There was no sign of his mother or any other kittens nearby, so we asked him to keep checking to see if she turned up. Unfortunately, after almost eight hours there was still no sign of her so we said we would take it in as its lack of food was becoming critical.
The male kitten was about 5 days old and still had his umbilical cord attached. We rushed him to one of our vet nurses who hand rears for us, and she cared for him for about 36 hours. He was very vocal (he had a very good set of lungs) and it’s unlikely that she had much sleep!
We knew we had a mother cat with our vet who had five kittens roughly the same age as this little one – we decided to try to place him with this mother in the hope that she would accept him as her own. This can always be a bit tricky, but we decided it was worth a try. We took him to the veterinary surgery and the vet nurses rubbed the smell of the other kittens on him before placing him with the mother cat. They then stayed to observe how things went as the kitten would need to be quickly removed if she objected to him.
After about 10 minutes, they came to tell us that the mother cat had already washed him, and he was suckling heartily. They observed for about half an hour just to ensure everything was going well. The next morning, the surgery called to say that it was as if this kitten was the mother’s own. We couldn’t have been more relieved or happy. An abandoned kitten now has a new mum and family with every chance of a lovely life ahead. It is things like this that really make our work worthwhile.
The orphan kitten 
With new family