Itty Bitty Kitty Committee

A rescuer found a very thin female cat walking through her yard who she hadn’t seen before. The cat appeared to have been recently pregnant and ran up to the rescuer for help, asking for food. She was so hungry and was eating whatever she could find, that mama cat vomited up about 20 napkins and tin foil. Mama cat kept going to the rescuer each day after the first visit for food. A few days later, the mama cat brought one of her kittens to the rescuer for food and the rescuer put a GPS tracker (by Tractive) on a collar to locate the rest of the litter. The GPS tracker mapped 3 hotspots frequented, located in 3 different yards. The rescuer went to these 3 hotspots looking for the kittens after the mama was caught. With the help of neighbors, they were able to find a kitten at EACH hotspot! It was truly a community effort, and neighbors would yell “I’ve got a kitten in my yard!”

The rescuer called this family the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee (IBKC)! Mom was a tortie point, 2 of her kittens are tuxedos, and she had an orange and black kitten. All of the kittens were in very poor condition - they were dirty, had varying degrees of goopy eyes, and had very leaky butts.

The rescuer contacted Feral Cat Coalition who reached out to Smittens Rescue for help.

When the kittens were dropped off at their new foster home, all of them had their eyes shut and 3 were extremely lethargic and weren’t moving. The black kitten was the strongest one. The fosters immediately brought the family to the Smittens’s medical director for evaluation. They all received immediate medical attention and the medical director was concerned both tuxedos weren’t going to make it.

The family was brought back to the foster house. You could tell mama cat was relieved to be safe with her kittens and not having to forage for food. The next few days were vital. To get food in their bellies the foster parents syringe fed the kittens and made sure they were taking their medicine. The black kitten was the first one to play on the cat tree, then the orange one shortly after. The two tuxedos concerned the foster parents, especially the one with the stripe on her nose because they wouldn’t move much. Both tuxedos would sit still and crouch where they were sitting. Over time, both tuxedo kittens eventually pulled through and they started moving aro und and playing!

The rescuer and fosters decided to give the IBKC these names:

Bella - mama cat

Toaster - tuxedo kitten with no stripe

Sprite - tuxedo kitten with stripe on the nose

Seamus - orange kitten

Bear - black kitten