For context, see here: @nikv/tale-of-a-little-cat-family-or-the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions
When I first started feeding Milo after she gave birth at the end of September, there was another man living at the house with a female cat and he expressed an interest in having her sterilised but moved out a few days later, taking her with him, and I didn't know that he was still in contact with Milo's owner and didn't ask. A few weeks ago, Milo's owner told me that that cat was now hanging out in his yard. She was looking skinny and unwell and I told him to feed her whenever he saw her and asked to be taken to her owner.
It turned out that she had given birth to 2 kittens and there were now 3 cats and the owner asked if I would sterilise them all. Bookings were made and we continued feeding the mother cat whenever we saw her. I planned to keep the cats after they came back from the vet and feed her up. I didn't take her immediately because when cats are separated, they often no longer recognise each other. The aggression that had caused Simba's broken leg was not unusual and I wanted to avoid a repeat of that.
Fate intervened in the form of extremely cold weather in the days before they were due to go to the vet and for some reason, she was outside on those 2-3 nights when the temperature dropped below freezing. Milo's owner found her dead in a neighbour's yard the morning I was supposed to fetch them. I was sad and angry when I heard that but we collected her kittens as agreed.
Ginger and white boy: I wonder if he got that fluffy coat from that busy boy Dennis!
They were very scared at first in the strange environment of my bathroom but once they felt more at ease, they became sweet and affectionate cats. They haven't been mistreated, they just belong to a poor man who lives with his whole family in someone's basement. The odd thing is that the boy is large, over 4kg, and his sister is tiny, just over 2kg. I suspect that he was dominating the others in the food department and that caused his mother to start trying to live elsewhere.
This petite tabby girl got to spend some time in the cone of shame as she started taking her stitches out after a few days but she's so small, the cone didn't stay on for more than a week before she figured out how to get it off every time although by then the danger of the wound opening up was small and Simon helped me take the rest of the stitches out this morning. Years ago I learned the trick of using the side of a nail clipper to cut stitches from an army medic so stitch removal is always DIY at my place.
All healed up and time to go as they were extremely bored at my place and kept escaping every time I opened the bathroom door, only to be confronted by a strange house interior with hostile resident cats and then I had to lure them back into the bathroom with food. I took them home this afternoon with a bag of food and told their owner to feed them separately so that big boy didn't take all of his sister's food. I hope they will be ok but I'll check on them regularly and I'm relieved that ginger boy will now not turn into my next pesky tomcat visitor. I had my own interests at heart here too!
RIP mama cat, I really wish she had been taken better care of although if she had been moving away from her original home and wouldn't go there overnight, nothing could be done.