Mourning
Most of the people in my life already know this story. I just have to rehash it out because I'm so upset over it. Last weekend I found a tiny newborn kitten in the street. (This is a different kitten than Mitsuba, the 6-week-old I rescued, who has been rehomed. She is great.) It was raining and me and Matt were walking home from Ikebukuro station, and I heard a kitten-in-distress cry. Against Matt's better judgement I went down an alley, which opened up into a little area that had enough room for some doorways and an apartment staircase. It was dark and cool and still raining, and I was trying to look in the bushes, and almost squashed the kitten because he was lying in the middle of the concrete at the bottom of the stairs. He still had his birth sac attached to him and was completely cold to the touch. I snatched him up, did a quick search for anything else, tucked him under my shirt, and fled home.
We had cat milk on hand because Mitsuba drank it for a couple of days to get her strength back. We also have a cat heating pad because when we got Kafka she shivered at night. We plugged in the pad, warmed up some hot water bottles, and tried to feed him. (I learned later we should have warmed him up completely first, but I doubt it really mattered.) I tied off and cut his cord and tried to clean him up. He stank and was COVERED in mud (and probably blood). He was totally black at first. He cried and cried, got a little milk down him, and slept in fits. I was up with him all night.
We got him to the vet in the morning. He seemed to be doing better and the vet agreed to take care of him until we found a foster. Newborn kittens have to be fed every couple of hours. This was Sunday morning.
We found a foster Monday morning. We planned to take him there the following Saturday. That would have been today.
We got a call at 4 am Tuesday morning. The kitten had been doing okay, then just took a turn for the worst. He got weaker and weaker and had just died. The vet had been up with him all night, doing everything she could.
(This is him yawning in my bicycle basket on the way to the vet's.)
I know that newborns are delicate, and he had hypothermia and the worst start possible. He very well might not have grown up into a healthy cat even if he had lived. Animals die. If I plan to be a volunteer on a regular basis, I have to be able to cope with this.
It's not the kitten dying that haunts me, though. It's how I found him. He was in an open area, in the cold rain. How did he get there? Did his mom toss him? I think it's more likely he was born inside one of the apartments and the people threw him out. He was so cold that he had obviously been there for a while, crying and crying. How could no one have gone to see what the problem was? I went back that night to search for anything. No kittens or people, or even lights in the apartments. I saw a few cats, a couple of orange ones, but that means little in Ikebukuro, which has a huge cat population. I went back last night too, searching, but I'm not sure for what. Saw more cats and an open door nearby that had a litter box in the entrance, so someone owns at least some of these cats. Surely a cat owner wouldn't leave a kitten to die in the rain?
If I knew how he got there, I think I would be okay. I can't be sure that it was human action that led to his situation, but I believe it was. I've watched plenty of Animal Cops, I know that people are horrible, but actually holding that cold little body against me and seeing how far it can go was like a dropkick to the heart. He was just a newborn baby.
I feel like you do when you are going down the stairs and miss one. It's not really that big of a deal, but it keeps surfacing in my head. I'm so glad we rescued the two cats we own instead of getting them from some shop.