The Tale of the Cats
One sunny afternoon, I was getting my kids out of the car when a scruffy feral cat stepped out from under my neighbor’s deck. She was followed by two kittens but when I moved sideways, the mother cat let out a deathly hiss and I backed away.
Later, we saw the mother cat cross the street, carrying one of the kittens in her mouth. I walked to the side of the house and found the other one, shivering and mewing in a bush. Without thinking, I picked it up and it too issued a deathly hiss and swiped at me, so I wisely put it back down. A little while later, the mother came back and collected it as well.
Over the next couple of weeks, as I played catch with my older son in the backyard, the kittens would appear by our back fence. Like spectators at a tennis match, their heads would go left and right as they followed the path of the ball as it traveled from my glove to my son’s glove.
We soon learned there were three kittens, two black and one calico, as well as the mother. They were living in the greenery between the two rows of houses. I sent an email to the ASPCA about “trap neuter release” (TNR) and was contacted by Cindy, a supervisor who lived less than a mile from me. The next day, she dropped off two cages. I downloaded instructions on how to set them up humanely with food and covers. Monday morning, everything was in place. Monday afternoon, everything…
