I’ll start with the good news!
Yesterday, as I was heading back inside through the sun room, I spotted Button and his blue, blue eyes. I’ve been trying to capture just how blue they are and, this time, the light was hitting them just right. The camera was even able to capture the colour very well, too!
I was able to get a few pictures and even a short video. When I had the chance, I shared them with the Cat Lady (and others! 😁), just so she could see the colour.
Soon after, she was asking me questions about Button, and telling me she was going to share the photos around. She knew some people that had lost their elderly cats and was hoping they’d be willing to adopt a kitten.
Well, I don’t know about the ones that lost elderly cats, but she did find someone that was very interested!
Best of all, this person is a vet!
For all his tiny size and blue eyes, we know Button is likely at least five weeks old, based on things like how much he’s eating solid food, compared to how often he nurses on the creche mothers. The vet knows that he is a foundling, and that we know little else about him. We also just assume he has ear mites.
The Cat Lady will pick him up, most likely on the weekend when they are in the area again. He’ll be with her for about a week before going to the vet. The vet is even taking on the expenses that the rescue would normally take on before a cat is adopted out.
Now, we’ve had way too many of these things fall through in the past couple of years, so I’m not holding my breath on this, but as it stands now, Button’s gorgeous blue eyes seems to have found him a forever home!
Now for the sad news.
The girls had fed the cats outside quite early in the morning, so when I went out to do my rounds, I topped up the kibble a bit, then did my usual routine.
There is one black and white kitten – one of the Squashes (kittens that like to sit in the pots with my summer squash) – that we’ve been keeping our eye on. He (she?) did not seem overtly sick, but was definitely not thriving. Yesterday, I honestly thought he was dying, like the other black and white Squash kitten I’d found a few days ago. However, when I picked him up, he perked up, got active, wanted down, and started behaving normally.
I was keeping an eye out for him while I was outside and, by the time I was ready to head in, I had not seen him anywhere. This kitten was one that always stayed close to the house, with several favourite places to hang out, and he was in none of them.
*sigh*
So I started looking for him, knowing I was likely looking for a body. But where could he be? If anything, this is one kitten I would have expected to find out in the open, like some of the other kittens we’d found passed on.
Once all the obvious places where checked, I started looking for the less obvious places he might have gone into.
Which is when I saw the tail, peaking out from under the back of the kibble house.
An orange tail.
This year, we’ve had one orange fluffy kitten, and one orange and white kitten. The orange and white kitten was in the sun room, enjoying himself in the cat cage.
Which is when I realized, I hadn’t seen the orange fluffy one in a while.
I will not go into detail but, let’s just say, the orange kitten had been under there for quite some time. It took some creative effort to get him out and bury the remains under a rose bush.
I made sure to hose down under the kibble house after. There is a sheet of rigid insulation on the ground that fits perfectly under the floor of the kibble house, and a lot of the cats and kittens will hang out under there, or hide under there if they feel threatened. The back wall of the kibble house is just a few inches above ground; too low for an adult cat to squeeze under. The front is more open, with just the 2×4 supporting the floor of the kibble house for them to squeeze under. It’s hard to see anything under the kibble house without basically getting down on the ground. When I retrieved the remains of the orange kitten, I did make sure there were no other remains.
Which means I still had the black and white kitten to find.
With the condition of the one kitten, I really wanted to make sure the black and white wasn’t in the sun room for us to find by the smell or something. After looking all over, I found myself eyeballing the counter shelf. The kittens like to hide under it, and go between it and the window.
Then one of the other cats moved out from under the table saw, and I could see a little black.. something.
It turned out to be a barely visible tail tip.
*sigh*
This one got buried under the honeysuckle.
So that’s two more gone, and we don’t know why. The Cat Lady says it’s most likely lung issues. I suspect she’s seen a lot more of this than we have!
But still, this is 5 kittens I’ve buried in less than a week, and only one of them looked like it was having issues. I can’t say for sure about the orange one, since it ran from us all the time, but the other two had seemed hale and hardy, until they weren’t.
It just occurred to me; this black and white and the orange kitten were both Brussel’s babies. That’s at least two out of her litter of four she has lost. Possibly three, as the other black and white might have been hers, too.
I just went looking through my photos. There is one of her kittens that has a distinctive black splotch over its nose, and I’ve been seeing that one around the house. Looking at the others in the photo, I am now more convinced that the other three from her litter are now gone.
Wow.
So…
What a start to the day.
At least we have the good news of Button soon to be going to his forever home with a vet!
I’ll take what I can get.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 