Gabe to the rescue...

I'd like to introduce you to Super Gabe, finder of small kittens and rescuer of the same. We are down at my parents house this week and early today, before lunch, Gabe, my mom, and I took her dogs out for a walk in the woods. When we got back to the house, it was raining. We heard a very loud meow but it sounded like the meow of a very small kitten. My mom and I took the dogs in and asked Gabe if he could find the *kitty. Gabe came in and said "I found it. It's stuck on a stick. There's a string coming from it and it's tangled around the stick." I had some horrible vision of what could be wrong and, when my mom asked me to go check, I told her to come with me because it didn't sound good.

Well, Gabe gave a very good description of what was going on. We found a very young kitten with its umbilical cord and placenta still attached. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the stick about 6 times. There was no way that poor little thing was going to get free by itself. While I untangled the little one, my mom got a towel. When we brought the little one in, I had to tie off the umbilical cord and cut it. My mom put together some "orphan formula" that we've fed orphaned kittens in the past and, despite it's extremely young age, the kitten enthusiastically sucked the formula out of the eye dropper. As the kitten dried off, you could start to see some brownish patches around the face. I think the baby is going to be a calico. Gabe checked around outside and didn't find any trace of the mommy cat or any other kittens. We figure the mommy cat was a young one and, when she was moving the babies, this little one got tangled. In order to save/move the other baby(ies), she left this kitty behind...or that's our best guess.

The question now became what do we do with the baby kitty. While we were trying to figure it out, we wrapped the baby in a heated towel (boy do microwaves come in handy). It was obviously a little survivor and had a hell of a set of lungs on it. It was eating and trying to climb out of the towel onto me. We called my parents' vet and they suggested we call the cat adoption center and see if they had any nursing mommy cats. It turned out that the adoption center had several nursing mommy cats and luckily one of them adopted the little fighter. I was very relieved because that meant I wouldn't have to worry about it when I leave town for BlogHer.

Super Gabe, kitty rescuer

*Someone dropped some kitties in my parents' neighborhood and my mom feeds them until she can catch them and take them to the local animal rescue.