muddocktor
Member
Poor little thing; didn't have a chance. 
The back story goes like this: A couple of months ago I saw a pregnant calico coming around and hitting the feed bowls for our outside cats. I live a few miles out of town and the area seems to be a favorite place for people to dump off their unwanted pets and has been a problem for us for 20+ years.
So about a month ago she quit coming around, so I figured she went elsewhere or was having her kittens away from my house. So about 1 1/2-2 weeks ago I saw her again, no longer pregnant and hitting our feed dishes again. You could tell she had been someone's pet at one time as she wasn't totally leery of humans and when she was hungry would actually come up to you and let you pet her. So, a few days later we started seeing little ones around too, so she had brought them over with her. The little ones were very skittish and would disappear when you would go outside.
My wife started putting some pate' can food out for the little ones and they discovered the delights of eating solid food, but were still skittish. But, 3 of the 4 kittens were slowly adjusting to having us moving around outside and were not as shy; the 4th one was still real skittish. About a week ago, I brought out what I call my "Catfish Rig", which is a fishing pole with a toy mouse tied on it and got 2 of them involved with playing with the mouse. So 3 of the kittens were slowly getting used to humans. I figure those kittems were around 4 weeks old then.
The last few days, we hadn't seen the 4th kitten around, until this morning. My wife saw it on the porch and it didn't run away; just hid next to a plastic dog transport kennel. She called me out as she saw a big spot on it's hind end where it was hurt and I went up to it and it didn't run then either. I figured it was hurt fairly badly, so I called my daughter over to help round the little fellow up. We managed to catch the kitten, loaded it into a cat kennel and brought it to the vet. It didn't take but one look by the vet to know that the little fellow was in dire shape, with it's only hope being amputation of it's tail and a big battle of fighting infection just to have a slim chance of saving him. So, the humane thing was just to put the little fellow down and end his suffering.
As for the other kittens and the Mommy cat, my daughter already has lined up homes for the kittens and is working up on lining up a home for the Mom. We are still working with the kittens and getting them adjusted to human interaction and the Mom seems to be good with women. She is very shy around me, which tells me that it must have been a man that dumped the poor girl out here.
As for why I posted this: I just wanted to vent a bit about jerks that dump pets and treat them like an unwanted toy. And it also bothers me to have to put down a little fellow like that kitten even though that was the most humane thing to do for him. At least he's no longer suffering and in pain.
The back story goes like this: A couple of months ago I saw a pregnant calico coming around and hitting the feed bowls for our outside cats. I live a few miles out of town and the area seems to be a favorite place for people to dump off their unwanted pets and has been a problem for us for 20+ years.
So about a month ago she quit coming around, so I figured she went elsewhere or was having her kittens away from my house. So about 1 1/2-2 weeks ago I saw her again, no longer pregnant and hitting our feed dishes again. You could tell she had been someone's pet at one time as she wasn't totally leery of humans and when she was hungry would actually come up to you and let you pet her. So, a few days later we started seeing little ones around too, so she had brought them over with her. The little ones were very skittish and would disappear when you would go outside.My wife started putting some pate' can food out for the little ones and they discovered the delights of eating solid food, but were still skittish. But, 3 of the 4 kittens were slowly adjusting to having us moving around outside and were not as shy; the 4th one was still real skittish. About a week ago, I brought out what I call my "Catfish Rig", which is a fishing pole with a toy mouse tied on it and got 2 of them involved with playing with the mouse. So 3 of the kittens were slowly getting used to humans. I figure those kittems were around 4 weeks old then.
The last few days, we hadn't seen the 4th kitten around, until this morning. My wife saw it on the porch and it didn't run away; just hid next to a plastic dog transport kennel. She called me out as she saw a big spot on it's hind end where it was hurt and I went up to it and it didn't run then either. I figured it was hurt fairly badly, so I called my daughter over to help round the little fellow up. We managed to catch the kitten, loaded it into a cat kennel and brought it to the vet. It didn't take but one look by the vet to know that the little fellow was in dire shape, with it's only hope being amputation of it's tail and a big battle of fighting infection just to have a slim chance of saving him. So, the humane thing was just to put the little fellow down and end his suffering.
As for the other kittens and the Mommy cat, my daughter already has lined up homes for the kittens and is working up on lining up a home for the Mom. We are still working with the kittens and getting them adjusted to human interaction and the Mom seems to be good with women. She is very shy around me, which tells me that it must have been a man that dumped the poor girl out here.
As for why I posted this: I just wanted to vent a bit about jerks that dump pets and treat them like an unwanted toy.
And it also bothers me to have to put down a little fellow like that kitten even though that was the most humane thing to do for him. At least he's no longer suffering and in pain.
