Kittens and Stones

The last couple of weeks have been more eventful than we would have liked. First we had an unexpected trip to the emergency room one evening when Jason was suddenly down on the floor screaming in pain. We raced to the ER and made quite the dramatic entrance. I had Jason on one hand who was bent over and walking like Lurch while he moaned and involuntarily screamed. I had a traumatized and crying Carter on the other hand. The three of us made quite the picture as we burst through the doors of the emergency room. Thankfully, the staff took one look at Jason and took him to triage immediately. A short while later he had the surprising diagnosis of kidney stones. Given that no one in his family has a history of kidney stones this was unexpected. We were sent home with various medications and a strainer for Jason to urinate in so he could catch the stones.

Jason proceeded to spend the next few days in anything from agony to discomfort. Thus he wasn’t thrilled when I called him one morning saying I needed help. He probably assumed it was a horse problem and I didn’t say otherwise until he arrived on the scene. I then told him to stop moaning for a a minute and listen. And then he heard it as well, the scared meowing of a kitten. The kitten was trapped between the wood interior and metal exterior of one of the run-in sheds.

There was an opening where the kitten had clearly squeezed in, but I couldn’t reach in far enough to grab it. I told Jason to make noise on the inside to flush it out while I waited on the outside to grab the kitten. Jason had no issues making noise with his involuntary screams of pain, and shortly the kitten came bursting out, undoubtedly terrified by the screaming, moaning man. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to grab it as it came out too fast, and since it was terrified it of course started running.

I screamed at Jason to run, it was coming his way. Jason attempted to lurch along after it, and then I got around to the other side of the shed and started running. The kitten made it under the fence and decided to hide in the pile of feedbags I had dropped. I was able to quietly creep through the gate, reach down and grab the kitten. Success!!

Then we had the dilemma of what to do with the kitten? We are already supporting four rescue cats (Jingle, Joy, Igor, Oscar) and we were in agreement that we were not going to support another one. I sent a text to Kate informing her we had captured a kitten. Miraculously she produced a home for our scared, sad kitten in about 15 minutes. We were thrilled, grateful and amazed.

The kitten is a girl, and has been pronounced healthy by her new home’s veterinarian. She is being doted on by a family. Like Igor, she will have her own barn complete with a heated and cooled office to call home. The hope is that one day she might catch a few mice. Igor has turned out to be quite effective in this department so maybe she will follow in his footsteps.

A few days later, Jason passed his kidney stones. We had successfully caught and re-homed a kitten, and Jason had rid himself of his kidney stones. We do love happy endings!

Jason holding our recently captured, very frightened, kitten