While out exploring the area, we pulled into the park and campground near Riffe Lake. In the parking lot we found a “Huggies” diaper box with a couple of holes punched in the top.
As you may have guessed, inside there were three kittens barely a week old. My wife scooped them up and we rushed back toward town as these little ones were in dire shape; who knows how long they had been left in the box with 96-degree heat.
We swung by a farm supply store and bought kitten formula and small nursing bottles with which my wife desperately began administering to the kittens. We lost one on the way back to Thousand Trails — a little black calico — certainly a little life that would have meant the world to the right person.
We spent all night watching and feeding the other two and then hitched up our travel trailer and headed back home early this morning in order to beat the heat and to get the remaining two kittens, “Kit” and “Kat,” to where we could administer better care.
As I write this, I’m sad to say that as with any kitten removed prematurely from its mother, survival is slim at best, and even with some good formula, Kat faded quickly and passed in the gentle and loving arms of my wife. Kit seems strong for the moment and we are hopeful he will, with our care and boundless affection, grow to be strong, healthy and happy; a cat with a full nine lives ahead for himself and perhaps one or two extra for his litter mates who won’t have that chance.
You see, my wife and I believe that any critter who finds its way into our home has won life’s lottery. Not only out of love but of stewardship and responsibility for life until its natural end, ever sorrowful that so often happens to be.
That is certainly one takeaway from Genesis we are so often reminded of when God places an animal in our care.
I will close by saying it is agonizing to watch my wife’s heart break as she vainly tries with love and persistence to thwart the inevitable, only to take meager solace in knowing that precious tiny life did not die alone, but in gentle hands with a heartfelt love no matter how short that life may have been.
Speaking on her behalf and for the two kittens who were unable to speak for themselves, I say to you whomever left them to certain doom in that box in the suffocating heat — shame! There are multiple places — Humane Society, SPCA and others — who will gladly take unwanted animals, nurse them to health and find loving homes for them to live.
Let that be your guiding light and wisdom the next time, not just momentary convenience.
Jarrod and Amy Roth
Port Orchard
