Every day on my way home I pass a home (actually, it's an RV, but an older couple live there year round) that always has several cats hanging out in the driveway. The property is not a very nice one and there are two very old rotted out trailers next to the RV on the same piece of proptery. Every year around this time many kittens appear. My daughters and I always slow down to view the kittens from the road on our way by.
A couple of weeks ago on my way home from work I was sad to notice one of the cats had been hit by a car and lay dead on the side of the road. This happens from time to time as you can imagine with as many cats as there are around that property. There are probably around 30 adult cats there.
The next day, again on my way home from work, I saw a small black lump at the end of the driveway (almost in the road) that looked like a very small dead kitten. I stopped to take a closer look only to discover that this very tiny kitten was not dead at all. It was only about a day or two old. I didn't see a momma cat around and I was afraid that this kitten may have belonged to the cat that had died the evening before... so I scooped it up and walked around the property (the property owners were not home at the time) to see if there were any other teeny tiny babies out of place. I didn't find anymore tiny ones that day, but I did discover MANY more older kittens running around.
If I had to guess I would say there were at least 40 kittens running around the property at that time. Many of them were sick. Some could barely walk and their eyes were crusted shut. Others lungs rattled when they tried to take in a breath. Their bellies were distended from worms and other parasites, but the rest of their bodies were just skin and bones. Literally, all you could feel when you touched these kittens was bones. There were even a couple of dead kittens around the area in various stages of decay. I was shocked at the conditions they were living in. I couldn't believe anyone could sit back and watch this happening in their driveway.
I checked to see if they had any food, and they did have some dry cat food laid out under the RV. I did not see any water bowls, though. I walked around the RV and discovered that the RV was not hooked up to any water line and realized that these people probably didn't have running water. The older cats could get water from a nearby brook, but it was too far for the kittens to walk to so they did not have any access to water.
I took the teeny tiny kitten that I had originally stopped for because if I had left it there it would have died.
My mother, Michele, arrived at my house soon after I had gotten home with the kitten. She volunteered to take it home and bottle feed it because she would be able to take it with her to work during the day. This would be necessary as kittens that small need to be fed every couple of hours through out the day.
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