Kittens from Hooters

A young woman brought three kittens in a large plastic container into the animal control office. She set the container on a counter.

Miss D, who runs the place, looked up. “Oh,” she said. “You’re the one called the animal control officer and he told you bring the kittens here.” The young woman said she was. “Yeah,” Miss D said. “He’s going to owe me. He’ll be in later and put on the form he brought them in.”

Miss D got a smaller container and transferred the kittens. She then had the woman fill in a form, leaving blank the section concerning who brought in the kittens.

“That’s two for him today,” Miss D said.

The young woman left, taking the large container. Miss D went to do something else. A young volunteer played with the kittens.

Priscilla said, “She was almost in tears.” We were at animal control to place my mother-in-law’s poodle-Chihuahua mix for adoption.

“Who was?” I asked. I had not heard the conversation between Miss D and the young woman.

“The girl,” Priscilla said. “She said they found the kittens near Hooters. They decided the mother had abandoned them, so they called animal control. The mother cat probably had gone off to find food.”

That’s the way it is sometimes with well-meaning people who don’t know anything about animals.

Just like a story I wrote for a newspaper, a woman found a tagged fawn in the woods, decided its mother had been run over or somehow else killed, and the fawn was abandoned. She took the little deer home and fed it and kept it in her garage and let it into the yard during the day.

The day after the story ran I was at the sheriff’s office to get overnight crime statistics. The local game warden was there, too.

“I got a bone to pick with you,” he said.

I figured he might be a little upset about what the fawn-finder had to say about parks and wildlife department. “You’ll notice everything had ‘she said.’”

“That’s not it,” the warden said. “It’s against the law to possess a tagged animal. But that’s not the bad part, either.”

The bad part, he said, was that the woman took a fawn whose mother probably was not far away.

“In fact, the doe might have been watching when people took her fawn,” he said.

Wardens often have to step in between well-meaning people and wild animals.

The three kittens found near Hooters would not be as lucky as the fawn.

Miss D told the young volunteer, “Go find Aunt G.”

A few minutes later, an older woman came in from the indoor kennel area. She looked at the kittens. “Tortoise shell,” she said. “Those two.” She picked up the third kitten, which was all black. The kitten hissed. “You bit me,” Aunt G said. She looked at Priscilla. “He bit me.”

She checked all three kittens, then told Miss D, “Their teeth aren’t big enough for solid food.” She again picked up the all black one. The kitten splayed its paws and hissed as it extended its little claws. She said there were three nursing cats in back, but none could take the three kittens.

Priscilla said, “Will they survive?”

“No,” Aunt G said. “To be honest, no.”

The kittens would be euthanized because a well-meaning human made the wrong conclusion.