No. Seriously. Lemme ‘splain.

Thursday morning at 4:20, I woke to the sounds of crying. But not human crying, an animal crying. It was long enough and loud enough that it woke me out of a dead sleep. So I got up and looked out our window. My car sits behind our trampoline which is outside of our window. I saw what I thought were rabbits bound out from underneath my car. So I went to the window on the adjacent wall to scope it out. Two grown kittens with their mother. But they weren’t crying. They were just playing. I saw a mound on the slab of concrete next to our garage and dismissed it and kept going back and forth checking out the mother and her kittens. After about 10 minutes I realized that mound on the concrete was moving and crawling around! A tiny kitten screaming for its’ mother. The cat with the other kittens just ignored it and another cat came up and just sniffed it and left.

I was freaking out. I kept keeping Jason updated but he told me not to worry and that the mother would eventually come. But you see, it had rained the day before and it was chilly outside. After panicking for 30 minutes Jason finally convinced me to go back to sleep. The mound quit crying and moving. I was praying it would survive just a few more hours until daylight. When I would hear random cries I would thank the Lord it was still living. It took me a good bit to fall back to sleep, but as soon as my alarm went off at 6:30 I strained to hear cries.

Nothing.

I peeked out the window to see the white mound still. Wet.

No cries.

I was feeling so guilty. What if I would’ve brought it inside when I had the chance? Would it still be alive?

I convinced Jason, after much prodding, to get dressed and come with me to check on it. I grabbed an old towel and walked down the stairs outside. Those other kittens watched us from under my car. Jason went ahead of me to check if it was still alive. I stood, scared and guilty. Jason peered down at it and after about 30 seconds said, “Well, it’s still breathing.”

I could have cried. I was so happy! I ran over and bent down to check for myself. It looked awful. Soaking wet with ants crawling on it and dirt soiling its’ solid white fur. I touched its’ head and it let out a loud “MEOOOWW!” Oh thank you Jesus!! My throat swelled and I talked sweetly to it as I wrapped it in the towel and began to warm it up. I walked inside, ecstatic.

We went to our bathroom to try to clean it. Ants, fleas, dirt, sticker burrs, and mud covered this solid white kitten. But once I started researching, they said to not bathe it until it was warmed up because at this age they couldn’t shiver to control their temperature. We had cleaned it as much as we could. It was filthy.

I tried to make some milk but we had nothing to feed it from. So as I got ready to leave, Jason sat with the kitten wrapped in a towel on the edge of the bathtub. I kissed him goodbye and thought of that baby all day.

On my way home I stopped by Wal-Mart and bought kitten formula and a bottle. When I got home, she was all dry and beautiful. I picked her up and brought her to the kitchen with me to fix a bottle. I set her on the counter. When I accidentally spilled some she freaked and stuck her nose in the small puddle. As soon as I fixed the bottle I tried to feed her. It took some time but now she’s a pro.

Right now she’s sleeping in her makeshift bed: a laundry hamper with some fleece blankets. I love feeding her. When she gets hungry she crawls up my chest to my neck and tries to suck on it. I know it’s silly, but I feel like a mother! She has to be fed every two hours and coddled. It’s good practice for us, I guess.