Rescued Kittens

UPDATE: All 6 Kittens had been adopted! Praise God! 5 of which went to one family on the 12th September! May God bless the 2 families that are so kind-hearted as to open their homes towards caring for these cats, and may the cats adjust to their new homes well and be happy. Now I just need to worry for Belly and Luna, but at least the 6 are safely housed in loving homes!

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These are 3 of the 6 kittens we brought in the house back around mid-May, at our house in Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.

What happened was that there were two female sister cats (from the same mum) outside the house who we were feeding. They would come and go. They were timid and suspicious, refusing to be stroked when we tried to, They just stayed away at a distance and come and eat when we have gone away from their food bowls.

Turned out their temperament and wariness was highly warranted, yet tragically it still did not save them from their fate.

The two sisters who we called Goldie and Grigia got pregnant and gave birth at very near the same time, and curiously each gave birth to a pair of girls and a boy. Not only that, both sets share almost the same colours gender-wise. Both pairs of females are various shades of grey, while both males are gold/ginger. By the way, both mums Goldie and Grigia were mainly shades of grey, with Goldie having streaks of orange too.

Goldie had parked her three kittens at one corner of our porch. while Grigia hid hers at a sheltered part of our little garden patch. We had never seen anything like it, two female cats with newborn kittens getting along well with each other. Even though these two were sisters, this behaviour was new to us. Usually new mums are aggressive to be fiercely protective of their brood.

One day around mid-May, we found Goldie dead and stiff, surrounded by her three kittens who seemed to still be trying to suckle milk from their lifeless mum. We were so upset. We suspected someone in the neighbourhood who hates cats had poisoned her. As for Grigia, coincidentally she had disappeared. She never returned for her kittens. So, we suspect the same fate had befallen her as well.

Suddenly there were 6 kittens without their mums. Afraid, crying, hungry.

We buried Goldie. We brought in her 3 kittens. The next day we saw that Grigia had not returned. It was starting to rain heavily again so we brought in Grigia’s 3 kittens too.

Suddenly we’re stuck with 6 new kittens! And we already have two grown cats in the house. We put the 6 kittens in the ‘wet kitchen’ part of the house, so that they are separated from our cats. There was no question about trying to save the 6 despite our situation. It felt like such a sin to just let them die outside the house. But now we have a huge problem.

The still ongoing Covid-19 situation complicates everything

Besides the cost of vaccination and spaying/neutering, there is the equally-pressing matter of us having to leave our rental home in Malaysia by mid-September to return to Singapore, if our Social Visit Passes are not approved for extension. What’s happening now is that we are currently allowed to stay on in Malaysia for a maximum of 14 days after Malaysia’s current stage of lockdown called RMCO (Recovery Movement Control Order) ends on 31st August. So we have to leave by 14 September if our extensions are not approved.

I still don’t know how to go about trying to get them adopted besides asking around.

As it is, our two cats Belly (who is already quite elderly) and Luna will have to be boarded at a vet here in Johor Bahru for God knows how long, until the Covid-19 situation has subsided and travel between Singapore and Malaysia goes back to normal. Why? Because in Singapore, we live in public housing flats (called HDB), where cats are not allowed. In fact it was partly because of this that we started renting a house in JB about 10 years ago, where we placed 3 cats adopted in Singapore to care for them.

So if they are boarded in JB, who knows for how long. Months? Years? The monthly fees for boarding for Belly and Luna will already cost a lot, let alone for 6 additional cats. So we really need the 6 to go to new homes. But I just don’t know how to have that happen.

I’m really depressed about it. It’s only a month left until the 14th September.

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