Animal Lover // Kittens left in the TRASH to die...

It was one of those days that I finished a long and tiring day of work, wanting to go home right away for my regular cold beer and have a lovely dinner with my wife.

I finished work that night around 7PM, went to my favorite small grocery store to buy my belgian beers and suddenly I overheard a conversation of some ladies at the store. As I understood, someone left a box with 5 kittens in the trash. While they were talking about it, I was thinking: “How could someone do something like that, and secondly, why is nobody doing anything about it?”

Once again, I was put in a position to help animals, and I don’t know why, but this seems to happen to me a lot. Sometimes I think nature likes to test us.

I decided to go look for that box, and there they were. Five tiny little kittens, not older than 2 weeks of age (you can tell their age by how open or closed their eyes are), all snuggling to keep warm, but they were wet, cold, and probably much hungrier than I was.

Without any hesitation I took the box and the adventure started. I went to several groceries stores to look for kitten milk formula, but I couldn't find any. Since I live in a small island in the caribbean, resources are limited. So I went to the pharmacy, and after googling what I could use instead:

I found that lactose-free human baby formula could do the trick until I was able to find the cat formula.

Please NEVER use cow milk as cats are lactose intolerant and they might get diarrhea which is dangerous at that age.

I arrived home with the kitten box, the formula and an eyedropper. My wife and animal rescue partner right away started to help me out, as she is a huge animal lover as well =)

They survived that night, and the following day I asked a friend to send me some real kitten formula and a special baby bottle for cats by airplane from Panama City.

The following 2 weeks where not fun at all, and I did not expect having to wake up every 2 or 3 hours during the night to feed them, although we got used to the routine and the kittens were worth it. Find more info about how to feet a kitten here

Important to note: kittens that young can not go to the bathroom by themselves, and need you to gently rub their bellies and genitals to stimulate them, so that they can eliminate. This is important and has to be done after every meal! This is normally the job of mamma cat, but if you rescue a kitten you will have to take over that vital role!

Little by little they grew, and we started to tell their story and looking for families for them. It was a hard task but we finally did it!

Now those kittens live happily in their new homes and it makes us feel full of joy to see them happy and healthy in loving homes!

Here are some photos when they were just babies and after adoption:

• These are the “Fulos”, in English means the blondes, two males adopted by Carlos Britton. Carlos runs a hostel in Bocas del Toro, and he decided to keep both.

• This is the picture of “Birdie” adopted by Meghan, also an expat in Bocas del Toro who loves animals.

• This is “Tigrilla” adopted by one of our friends Kristian and his wife Ingrid; she lives happily now close to Bluff beach.
  Before:
  

Now:

• And last but not least, here is Frida (she happened to be my favorite), adopted by Laura Kay from www.bocasyoga.com

Before:

Now:

I hope you all enjoyed the story of these 5 cats that were lucky I was there in the right moment that day. I had the idea to write this post to encourage more people do the same whenever they have the opportunity.

I could have ignored them, or taken them to the vet to put them to “sleep” but I preferred to take the chance and take a different direction.

If you like this post, please upvote it but most importantly, share it so we can all influence positively in other people's mind. Please also post a picture of your rescue if you are lucky to have one.