Mother Cat Leads Rescuer to Her Kittens
‘No way I would have found these kittens without this cat’s help.’
This remarkable mother cat, who’d been thrown from a car, surprised an officer from the Royal SPCA by leading him to her litter of four tiny kittens hidden in a barn.
Officer Jon Knight had been called out to rescue the young cat, after she was spotted being thrown from a car in Cambridgeshire, England.
The person who saw what happened called the RSPCA, and Jolie, as the cat was named, was taken to an animal hospital for minor injuries and for fleas and worms.
But it was also clear that she’d recently had kittens.
So the RSPCA decided to take her back to the scene of the crime and see what she did. Expectations were not high. “It was such a rural area, I had little hope of finding them myself,” said Officer Knight.
But as soon as he put Jolie down by the side of the road, she began calling out.
“When she started to get really vocal at first I thought she was calling to the kittens, but then it became clear that she was actually calling to me!” he said.
And as soon as he began to follow Jolie, she moved forward meowing all the time.
“I began to follow her and she took me through the rear garden, across a ploughed field and into a farm yard. All the time she was calling me and waiting for me to follow.
“She then took me into an old farm machinery barn and led me to behind a stack of old wood and there were her four kittens.
“There is absolutely no way I would have found these kittens without this cat’s help. She was a huge distance away from the garden she had first been found in, and was clearly doing all she could to lead me to her kittens.”
Jolie at the hospital with her kittens. The scrape on her nose is from when she was thrown from the car.
The kittens were tiny and still had their eyes closed. So Officer Knight took them with Jolie to an RSPCA hospital for special care.
“The kittens, two boys and two girls, are very healthy and fat,” said Laura Prince, cattery supervisor at the Block Fen hospital. “They have been well looked after by Jolie. But she is quite thin so we are doing what we can to get some weight on her, although she probably won’t get back to normal until the kittens have been weaned.
“She is a lovely friendly cat and only very young herself. You can tell how pleased she is to have a nice warm home and lots of food on tap.”
Officer Knight is delighted at the outcome. “In my 15 years as an inspector I have never had this happen before and I was quite shocked by it all. But this little cat knew exactly what she wanted to do, and she made sure that I followed her and brought her kittens to safety.
What do you say? Has a dog or cat ever led you to somewhere they needed to go? Let us know in a comment or on Facebook.