Chris and I jumped the gun a little bit on the round up of the kittens. The only night we could both be there to "catch kittens" happened to be the only night that animal control could not be there. We couldn't wait another week because there were sick kittens that would die within that week.
So after dinner one night Chris and I met at the property face to face for the first time. We really didn't have legal permission to be there removing kittens, but we decided the lives of those kittens were worth the risk. We got out of our vehicles and walked to the RV. Underneath it were 5 small kittens (about 3-4 weeks old). They lay sleeping in an old moldy box that had been there for quite some time. We immediately scooped them up and started back toward our cars to put them in a crate.
As my luck tends to run, when we were walking down the driveway with our hands full of kittens, the property owners pulled into the driveway. Chris and I stood there looking like guilty children with our hands in the cookie jar.
I looked at the man in the car and quickly said "Can we please have your kittens?". He looked at Chris and I for a minute and said nothing. I quickly went on to say that my mother and I were starting a nonprofit shelter (a little white lie at the time that is actually coming to be true now!) and we would love to help them place all of the kittens in nice forever homes. He relaxed a little when he realized that we were not there to start trouble for him as many other concerned citizens have. He gave us permission right then and there to take all of the kittens we could catch off of his property.
He introduced himself and went on to tell us that he had never even had a cat in his life until many years ago when a couple of cats showed up around his property. They were around for a few days and didn't seem to have any intention of going away. They were very thin and it seemed like they had no place to go so he bought some cat food and starting leaving food out for them. He did not consider them pets. He did not let them into his home. He simply wanted to make sure that they didn't go hungry. From there I imagine they multiplied, as cats tend to do, and that began the decades of uncontrolled reproduction. He also told us that because people started seeing numerous cats there some got the idea that they could dump their own unwanted felines on the property. So not only were they reproducing, but other cats were joining the colony.
Things got out of hand quickly with all of these cats continuing to grow in numbers. The property owners did not have much money and what little they did have was going to cat food when they could manage it. These cats never became their pets over all of these years. They are still not invited into the home (RV). To this day the cats and kittens do not even get very close to them, unless it is feeding time, at which point they will come somewhat closer than they normally would.
The property owners could not afford to spay/neuter all of these cats, but they were definitely overwhelmed. Several calls were made by concerned citizens over the years to animal control and local law enforcement as well as area shelters, but nothing really ever came of it. Some citizens even stopped over to threaten the property owners with animal cruelty law suits. All of these citizens meant well in that they obviously did care about the well being of the cats, but despite the many attempts by many people (including the property owners themselves) to reach out for help... help never arrived. Shelters told people to call animal control. Animal control would be called and animal control would then call shelters for help, but every time the response was the same in that they [the numerous shelters] couldn't do anything to help them because they were already at capacity. There were just so many cats that no one would take the bat and step up to the plate.
That evening Chris and I brought 8 small kittens (about 3-4 weeks old) and 4 older kittens (about 7-8 weeks old) to my mother, Michele's, home. They were set up in large dog crates. Chris brought deworming medication, food, formula, and antibiotics donated by the Franklin County Humane Society and we set to work. All of the kittens had crust over their eyelids. One of them had so much crustiness on its eyelids that they were sealed shut and very swollen. We used warm water and a cloth to gentley remove the crust and help it to open its eyes. Pools of pus came spurting out when the lids finally parted. The pressure on that poor babies eyes must have been painful. At first we couldn't even find her eyeballs in all of that pus. Others had respiratory infections. The older kittens had basically the same problems but were also very weak from dehydration as they were no longer nursing from their mothers and had no access to water. They were too little to follow the momma cats to the nearby brook for a drink. Their bellies were very distended from worms and parasites as well as constipation (also a result of dehydration). They were all, of course, covered in fleas.
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