the calm before the next storm

The firemen had kept asking throughout the operation whether the cats were wild or not, and all we could do was explain the situation over and over: the mother had been someone's pet, but not for several years, and the kittens weren't used to humans. We'd been hoping that the mother would back off a bit to allow contact with them, but that hadn't happened yet.

On retrieval of the hissing, scratching kits from the foundations, however, Salvador had his answer.  Nodding, he grimly confirmed "These are wild kittens. But not to worry - five days or so looking after them in a confined room, and they'll mellow and be tamable."  So, I had prepared the tool shed: made it safe as I could and put together a nest with warm, clean bedding.

Would they not have a better chance of survival in their mother's care, though?  Salvador was vaguely surprised at the question, having assumed abandonment. As if on queue, Agatha, her undercarriage looking painfully swollen from lack of suckling, poked her head out from round the corner where she'd been hiding.  Well, of course they probably would stand a better chance with her.  Especially as they'd not been introduced to solid food yet.

Before they left, the firemen tried to round her up but soon realised what an impossible job that was, so in a painful reenactment of two weeks previous, I slowly carried the kittens to the other side of our house again (this time I walked around, not through), in full view of Agatha, encouraging a little mewing conversation to take place so that she might follow. But just as last time, she instead stood parallysed and confused and would not budge save for to bolt 10 metres down the road where she paced and howled like a mad thing.

Consensus was that she was anxious to be with them and would find them out by smell if I left the window of the tool shed open.  They would surely be safer there.  Far away from deep holes and the coming cold and rain.  And the sooner they could have a bit of calm, the better.

If and when Agatha found them, there was to be no guarantee that she wouldn't just carry them away with her again, of course, but that was just a risk we would have to take, it seemed.  She was their mother, after all.  And all the internet articles we'd read said they should stay together for as long as 12 weeks if possible.  We hadn't yet read the one which suggested some feral cats might only be tamable if separated as young as four weeks, and even if we had, wouldn't we just have thought that a little too harsh?

So, it was dusk, the firefighters had gone, the neighbourhood doors were closing and the two kittens were safe and calming down, snuggled together in a dark corner of the tool shed.

Would Agatha find them?  And where was Smokey Joe in all this?

Let's find out next time, huh?