Didn’t get much sleep last night, tossed and turned and finally gave up and went into the living room to sleep in the recliner. About 2:00 in the morning, saw headlights sweeping the wall, the car woke me up. I heard a door slam, but this happens a lot where we live. People use our extra wide driveway to turn around in- or if they have car trouble, they park in our drive because it is so wide. But then B started barking (and well she never barks). I heard a thud and then running and by that time I was at the front door. The car was backing out of the driveway leaving in a hurry. I turned on the porch light and stepped outside and that’s when I saw the box and I heard the meowing.
I now have three short-haired probably 8 week old kittens in the bedroom. They are quite sickly and I am waiting for the vet to open so I can take them in, get them tested and start their vaccines. They are thin, they were full of fleas, they have been dewormed and de-flead. But for cripes sake in the middle of the night? What if they had gotten out of the box and wandered away or worse? Plus it was cold last night. Had I stayed in the bedroom, I wouldn’t have found them until morning. So now, I get to add to the mounting vet bill and take in these kittens that should have never hit the ground in the first place. All because someone doesn’t take the responsibility of being a good pet caretaker seriously. Please God let them be negative for FeLV.
Mary Ann… those ppl dont CARE if they freeze to death, if they get hurt while thrown over the fences, or are breakfast for predators, if they are sick and full of fleas, they see a pest, and they want to get rid of it……………….. 🙁 🙁
Mario is right. People don’t care about the cats they throw away. That’s why they throw them away. They’ll do it in warm weather, they’ll do it in cold. If those kittens froze to death, the people responsible would have blamed you for not helping them sooner.
While I’m not condoning what these people did, I also think we need to keep in perspective that if they truly “didn’t care” they would not have gone out of their way to box them up and drive them all the way to the home of a cat rescuer. If they truly didn’t care, they would have drowned, shot, poisoned, tossed them out from a moving car or any of the other horrid manner people dispose of unwanted animals.
Instead, I see the possibility of people who do care, though not enough to take personal responsibility, and perhaps are a bit embarrassed/ashamed of the state the cats were in. They chose to dump them under the cover of darkness so as to remain unassociated with the act…but, very importantly, instead of choosing the dozen other desolate country roads that were, no doubt, along the way they delivered them to the doorstep of a woman who they knew would at least give them a chance.
That is a small step in the right direction for all the unwanted and disposed of cats across this nation. If someone cared just enough to dump them all into the hands of capable rescuers we would not have nearly the stray problem and wouldn’t be reading weekly stories of kittens in bags on the side of the highway or floating down a river or set on fire.
To add, perhaps you could create something like those safe boxes/drops they have for infants in European nations? They created them so people who chose to abandon their babies at least weren’t leaving them in cardboard boxes at the mercy of the elements and what ever else lurks on downtown streets under cover of darkness. It could just be a secure wooden bin with ventilation holes, some hay/straw and a sturdy hinged lid on your front porch.