RIP, Harry

In the spring of last year, we ended up in the kitten rescue business. It started innocently enough – a stray cat had given birth to kittens in our backyard, in the hollowed out stump of an old pear tree. My wife, who does not do things half way, swooped into action. 

In the 18 months since, nearly thirty kittens have passed through our house, and 10 adult cats have been spayed or neutered and then released back to their colonies, so they can live out their lives while not increasing the feral kitten population. 

Over the last year and a half, this activity has altered our vacation plans, our home as we remodeled it to have a kitten hospital and nursery, our budget as we buy seemingly endless amounts of cat litter, kitten food and wet wipes, and most importantly, our lives. 

It is not now unusual for someone we do not know to reach out to Renee and say, “Hey – we found these kittens. Can you take them?”

And if we are not extremely over capacity, the odds are the answer is yes. Yes, we can. 

So it was not unheard of when a friend of a friend of a friend texted Renee last week and said that she had found four kittens, less than a week old, that someone had thrown in a dumpster, and could we take them?

We were over capacity, but one of our kittens was going to a new home in a few days, and newborn kittens really only need a warm place to sleep and regular feedings, so we closed off the dining room from our own cats and made it the overflow kitten nursery. When they showed up, they were starving – who knew how long since they had been fed?

Naming kittens is hard – especially when you are doing it every few weeks. It’s important to name them – both so we have a way to tell them apart, but also because people who adopt kittens connect with kittens who have names, and we need these kittens adopted. Most, but not all, folks rename the kittens when we adopt them out. This litter we named after Black celebrities – Harry Bellefonte, Morgan Freeman, Sidney Poitier, and Etta James. 

As is our custom, we took them all to our vet, who looked them over for obvious issues, and then we set to work feeding them 6 milliliters of formula every 2-3 hours and weighing them constantly to make sure they are gaining weight every day. 

When new kittens come in, we don’t get a lot of sleep for the first few weeks. 

All was good for a few days (other than our lack of sleep), but Harry’s weight began to plateau and then he began to lose weight, prompting another visit to the vet. The poor boy had parasites – it is assumed they all do – and he was sent home with medicine for him and all the others. 

But it was apparently too late – Harry didn’t make it through the night, and yesterday morning, I found him dead, nestled among his siblings, as if they were trying to hug him back to life. 

Various stats from kitten advocacy groups tell us that bottle fed kittens have a 20-40% mortality rate – it’s hard out here for a kitten without a mom to take care of them.

And it hurts to lose any of them, but we take some comfort from knowing that the mortality rate of the dumpster they were found in was going to be 100%, and in his last days, little Harry Belafonte was loved, cared for, snuggled, and warm, surrounded by his siblings who were also loved, fed, and warm. 

In his last week, he knew love, and was fed regularly from food bought by people who were rooting for him to make it. I’m glad we were able to do that for him, even if it doesn’t feel like nearly enough. But we’re also really clear it is infinitely better than his dying in a box in a dumpster, afraid and hungry.

Please, please don’t abandon kittens. Please spay and neuter your cats – especially those you let outside.