It is customary for something to go kinda wrong for me on holidays, something to ruin days of supposed celebration. Well, Thanksgiving 2010 is off to an awesome start.
One of the first things I did this AM was to step out onto the front porch briefly to spray some primer onto some model parts. While I was out there, I heard the faint sound of a kitten crying. I went in search of it, wearing not nearly enough for current conditions (well below freezing). My search took me across the road to a neighbors old shed, where I saw and heard a kitten trying to get attention. The kitten looked in good shape, but wasn’t interested in being my friend… it ducked back into the shed. I looked in and saw *another* kitten laying on a box about 6 feet in. Far out of reach. This second kitten was immobile, but breathing. It didn’t respond to me in any way.
I came back home and spent a few minutes pondering what to do… not my kittens, not my shed. Eventually I got better dressed and grabbed a long stick. Long story short… too damned late.
Attempts at revival (warm water) were unsuccessful. I suspect that even if I’d gotten the kitten when I first saw it, I would not have been able to help… it’s eyes were frozen. Not frozen shut… the vitreous humor, the clear liquid in the eyeball, was frozen into white mush. I can’t help but think that that would have been a bad thing even if I’d warmed it up while it was still alive.
This day sucks already.
15 Responses to “Nature Is Cruel”
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Just…I think I have to go have a bit of a weep. Apologies. Not the greatest week for me and this post was the Upkeep to the dam of my emotions.
where’s the kitten that’s still alive?
I don’t know. When I went back, it was gone, or at least hiding effectively enough. I suspect it was wailing in order to get attention for its dying sibling, and once the other kitten was dead, there was no more reason to either call for help or hang around. I hope that the mother cat has come back for it. Both kittens looked well fed enough, so they didn’t look abandoned. I left a few handfuls of food there.
That is a terrible way to start the day. Or to have as any part of your day.
After that, your day had to get better. Truly a horrible thing.
I’m sorry, Scott.
Jim
That sucks. I know how you feel. We had a semi-tame mother cat that would come around with her kittens. One day she brought one we hadn’t seen before and it was just about dead. We tried to save it but it was ridden with parasites (round worm) and though we gave it medicine for the worms it didn’t make it through the night. Had to bury it the next morning out in the flower bed. A few days later she brough another one by on death’s door (same problem). This time it made it through the night – and is now a holy terror (demanding to go out at six this morning despite the freezing weather – and he doesn’t take “no” for an answer). If you’re like me, not much sucks more than a little kitten that needs your help and you’re too late. I feel for ya.
The thing about this is that you are somehow dividing feral cats from the rest of the local ecosystem because you love them as your pets.
You certainty can’t expect to save every wild-born kitten in a mile or so radius from the way nature normally works in regards to any sort of native animal, as not only is the infant mortality rate very high, but in the long term the fact that a lot of wild kittens die by severe weather conditions after birth actually strengthens the genitics of the species as over time by giving the survivors who somehow survive the inherited genitics to better survive in the future.
Consider for a moment if _all_ the kittens of the local feral cat population in the vicinity survived and grew to adulthood, to produce offspring of their own.
In only a matter of a few years, all available prey animals in the area would be severely depleted, and instead of a few kittens freezing to death in winter, you would be faced with a huge population of feral cats at a near-starvation level year-round.
Take a wild guess what would happen then?
If any one of them had a genetic mutation that allowed it to consider its own species as a prey item, and that was inherited by its offspring, that would be a major asset to its survival…next thing you know, you have feral cats…and another species of cats that _feeds_ on feral cats when there are no other prey animals handy.*
Then, one day, Fingers goes out in the yard, and doesn’t come back.
That’s a lot quicker than it would actually occur, but it’s certainly a real possibility given enough time with a fairly new species on the North American continent, like Euro-Asian domestic cats are.
* Which would be something to see in its evolving form, as to make this work it would have to be something that could infiltrate itself into feral cat populations and kill them quickly in a way that didn’t make them suspect they were about to encounter a predator or try do harm to it.
Maybe it’s always a male; maybe it mates with normal cat females, then after they have had their litter of kittens, either slays them once the female is gone for some reason and carries the kitten’s bodies back to its own kind, our invites its genetic mate in to partake of a mutual meal as the two hold off the mother cat.
As a follow-up to that, it’s been said that few female domestic cats can resist the sexual charms of a male wildcat… and that hybrids are fairly common.
Does anyone know if pure-bred wildcats are willing to feed on either domestic cat kittens or such hybrid kittens?
You seem to be under the impression that I’m on a mission to Save All The Kitties. I am not. But when you *see* a kitten dying right before your eyes, you’d have to be something of a dirtbag to not at least *try* to do something.
I’ve seen a hell of a lot of dead cats and dead kittens, including a number in my own yard. But seeing a dead cat and seeing a *dying* cat are two very, very different things.
I note you didn’t do it immediately, but went back home, and then tried to save it when it got on your conscience after you’d thought about it a bit.
End result would have probably have been the same, but you did hesitate for a long time when placed in a difficult situation.
Simple Zen savvy would have allowed you to see the situation and deal with it in few second’s time.
It’s simple dialectics: either take the freezing kitten home at once and try to revive it, or leave it to its fate.
> you did hesitate for a long time
It was not a long time, and it was impossible for me to rescue when I was first in the situation… I was physically incapable of *reaching* the kitten, and I was freezing my own external bits off as I was essentially just in my jammies at the time.
> It’s simple dialectics: either take the freezing kitten home at once and try to revive it, or leave it to its fate.
Sadly, as socialists refuse to understand, the world is *not* simple dialectics. The kitten could not be rescued at once. Sometimes in order to rescue someone or something you have to *leave* them and then come back better prepared.
An update:
I went out to get the mail just now, and decided to walk a little further, on to the the shed from the day before yesterday. I briefly glimpsed the other kitten… and got a fairly good look at an adult cat. Both went into hiding deep in the shed. My guess is that the adult is the mother, and that the remaining kitten(s?) is being well tended to.
“I came back home and spent a few minutes pondering what to do… not my kittens, not my shed. Eventually I got better dressed and grabbed a long stick. Long story short… too damned late.”
“Either do or do not do. there is no ‘try’.
‘Eventually’?
Learn you must.
A big stick you must get, immediately.
Warm clothes?
A Jedi thinks not of such things.
Why you think I have only three fingers on each hand?
Frostbite… yes!
Four fell off, they did.”
As I mentioned, this was on private property not my own. Trespassing is not to be taken lightly. As it turns out the owner was ok with my intrusion, but that ok was granted later.
“Eventually” in this case was a matter of minutes. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t have mattered… with my luck, had I been there just a few minutes earlier and gotten the kitten while still alive, my attempts to warm it up propably would have put it through a torturous screaming death. And that would *not* have made be feel any damned better.