The little peeper

A couple of weeks ago while we were outside working on the art studio/crazy uncle house/cottage, we kept hearing this little sound--mew mew mew mew mew mew--like a baby catbird calling its mother. We heard the sound for a few days in a row but couldn't find the source. It was coming from the marsh, but we couldn't see anything.

Finally, last Saturday, I found the source; it wasn't a bird at all. It was a little kitten! He was tiny, all alone, and meowing his little head off. Well of course when I tried to approach him he ran off into a thicket of multiflora rose. There was no getting him out of there, so I just put some food by the fence.

Next day, what do I find curled up asleep on the compost pile? The little kitten. We thought at first he might be dead, but he was alive. He let me pick him up and we brought him in and called our local PAWS and left them a message. Obviously, with our FIV+ babies, we couldn't have him around.

We quarantined him in Em's room and fed him some food and milk. Poor little guy--so small that his tail is still doing that little kitten shaky thing. Here's a picture of the boy:

He's very tiny:

He kept up that little "mew mew mew," and because we found him where the spring peepers usually live, I began to call him Peeper. Kat wanted to call him Catbird, but then shortened that to Birdie.

Needless to say, the other cats were not amused. Both of them wanted to know just what was making that noise and why it wouldn't go away. Clawsie got so vexed that she took to swatting at Kisses any time she heard little Peeper/Birdie making noise. Poor Kisses--Clawsie can be a cruel sister.

At any rate, we got him to PAWS, where he tested negative for FIV, FLV, and all the other bad things kitties can get. He had a little case of worms, but they took care of that quickly. He's now at a good foster home with a little playmate his age (about four weeks), waiting for a permanent home to find him.

Now that he's left us, I miss him. If he'd had FIV, we would've adopted him ourselves, but there was no way we could bring a healthy cat in. The risk would be too great for him and for our babies. But I'm glad we got to save him. We still haven't seen any potential mother-cats around, so we really have no idea where he came from. The marsh, I guess.

Little catbird.