The following excerpt is taken from One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter by Diane Leigh and Marilee Geyer. This book is for sale at various locations and is also available at T.B. Scott Library in Merrill.
Although the shelter in this story is located in California, this story represents so many things that are on-going issues for the Lincoln County Humane Society. There are simply too many animals in need without enough space at the shelter, too few foster homes, concern about sickness, and always more funding needed to help the continuous amount of animals coming through the door. You can contribute to the solution by spaying and neutering your own pets. Please take them out of this terrible cycle so their babies never face homelessness or hunger.
‘Mother Cat’
Mothers of any species are amazing beings. The mothering instinct is selfless, compassionate, ever caring, often courageous.
The man who brought in this stray gray cat said she had given birth ten days before, and that he would bring her kittens to the shelter too. After four days he was finally able to find and catch them all. Once in the shelter, hungry and weak, they came down with respiratory infections. They would need extra care and at least six more weeks with their mother before they would be old enough for adoption. The shelter was already at capacity with both adult cats and healthy, full-grown kittens. The litter quickly got sicker, and staff made the decision to euthanize the kittens, hoping the mother could still be saved.
It is never possible, of course, to know exactly what an animal is feeling, but one had to wonder… did she miss her kittens? Did she worry about them, grieve for them, alone in her cage?
Three days later, a litter of stray kittens arrived without a mother. They were only three weeks old, much too young to survive on their own, and much too young for adoption. It is an all-too-common situation, and unless someone is available to take on the time consuming job of raising them by hand, kittens like these are usually euthanized – there are just no options for them in a shelter. But staff had an idea… perhaps the mother cats, who was still lactating, would accept the orphans.
From her cage, the mother spotted the tiny kits as soon as they were brought into the room. She never took her eyes off them as the cage door was opened and, one by one, the hungry kittens were placed on the blanket in front of her. She cleaned them as they cried, then laid down for them to nurse from her swollen teats. Despite what grief or confusion she herself might have been going through, she remained a mother first and foremost, accepting the litter of orphans, and in doing so, gave them their very survival. If these generous acts had been performed by a human being, we would call her heroic.
Now, all she and the kittens needed was time.
There are rarely enough foster homes for all the animals who need them. Availability changes on a day-by-day basis – once a foster family brings an animal back to the shelter, they then have room to take in another. No home had been available for the mother and her own kittens a week before, but during the week, space had opened up. The mother and her adopted litter moved in, and six weeks later the kittens returned, healthy and grown-up. Each was adopted within a few days. The mother cat was spayed, then she too returned, ready for, and so very deserving of, a new, permanent home.
She was adopted two weeks later, to begin a life where heroics are not required – where just being a cat is plenty enough.