If you love, say, to sing-a about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a, this is your month.
Not into that? No worries. If you love kittens, this is most definitely your month.
Where we last left our feral-born babies and their brave mamas, madre Chloe was returning to the great outdoors. I’m overjoyed to report that she continues to do well, and all of her wee ones have been adopted. (Number of people surprised by that: zero.)
In the meantime, we’ve had an outrageous, yet not at all unexpected influx of itty bitties. As you know, the warm months are peak season for free-roaming cats to give birth, and they’re right on schedule this summer. As of this update, Tabby’s Place is host to over thirty kittens and two mamas. It’s good timing for a Kitten Shower this Saturday!
Even after nine years at Tabby’s Place, I still get starry-eyed and squishy-faced over kittens. In the presence of a hamster-sized poof of perfection, my IQ slumps forty points and I expel brilliant thoughts like “SQUIDGY WIDGY WIDGY WIDGEEEE!”
In a very real sense, every single kitten is a miracle, a victory of life. You are personally helping each miracle to thrive beyond babyhood at Tabby’s Place. I know I don’t need to tell you how precarious is the life of a newborn kitten outdoors. And I know I can never thank you enough for so generously helping to save our free-roaming babies from that fate.
But in another sense, we had an unusually miraculous bona-fide miracle earlier this spring. Not five miles from Tabby’s Place, the “Mother’s Day miracle” unfolded like this.
On the eve of Mother’s Day, two hungry kittens scarcely a week old were found alone a few miles from Tabby’s Place. The kittens were fortunate to find sanctuary with us. Although the infants would be best off with their own mother, ’round-the-clock human care would save their lives.
But little did we know, those newborns had three siblings still shivering outdoors.
After a night of unrelenting rain, a huge-hearted human being discovered three cold kittens huddled in the mud beneath her shed on Mother’s Day. Although the kittens seemed lifeless, the Good Samaritan rushed them to Tabby’s Place.
Our team worked tirelessly to warm the wee ones — and one by one, they revived. Given the kittens’ veritable “resurrections” from the cold mire, we named them for Titanic survivors.
But the greatest miracle was yet ahead for little Sallie, Grace, Kornelia, Trevor and Harry.
The day after the kittens’ rescue, we got an extremely unexpected call. Just a few houses down from the kittens’ miry nest, a neighbor had trapped an extremely anxious adult cat.
She’d been hanging around for a few days, and the neighbor had come to recognize the cat as a chubby little sausage. Chubby, that is, until the day she was suddenly skinny.
Just like three of our orphans, the newly-svelte feline was snow-white with black patches. Could she be the little survivors’ mother?
The maybe-mama was in a state of high anxiety when our staff scooped her up. Immediately, it was obvious: she was a ringer for her newborns. There was no chance that this wasn’t “mom.”
We named her Gretchen, but dared not introduce her to the Titanic survivors until she settled down. Between the trauma of being trapped and the terror of being torn from her tots, Gretchen was a wearied, worried soul.
Finally, Gretchen grew quiet. It was time to try a reunion.
Such things don’t always end well. Would Gretchen nurse her kittens? Had it been too much time apart for her to embrace them?
In the words of Paul Simon, the mother and child reunion was only a moment away.
Gretchen began purring with a warm rumble, blissfully kneading with her paws as five kittens snuggled into their mama’s belly and nursed. Soon, their little bellies were full, and the family of six was happily dreaming together. In the days following, Gretchen proved to be one of the best mama cats we’ve ever seen. Today, all five kittens are fat, happy and healthy, ready for their forever homes. Gretchen will return to the extremely loving, enthusiastic care of the family who found her.
The miracle continues before our very eyes, and our hearts are full to bursting. Dear ones, I can’t thank you enough for helping to make such labors of love possible here. Have a beautiful month.