Rescued Kittens Find Love Truly Can Be Blind

By Nancy K. Crevier

Dexter noses his way forward to where Mindy McFarland sits cross-legged on the floor, bottle-feeding a one-pound kitten, in the kitchen of her Newtown home. The 7-year-old dachshund, born without eyes due to a genetic defect, cannot see at all, but his keen senses of hearing and smell let him know that Smudge, a blue-eyed white puff of fur, is out of the crate. He edges in, and gives the kitten a sloppy bath, the duty he has taken on since the kitten came into foster care on September 5 at the home of Mindy and John McFarland.

He is joined by his equally concerned housemate, Justice, a gigantic black and white Great Dane with only three legs. Somewhere in the house, Zazu, the one-eyed cat (nicknamed “Boo-Boo Eye” by the McFarland’s 5-year-old grandson) rests peacefully.

The McFarland household is a place of refuge and love for the special needs animals, nurtured and cared for mainly by Ms McFarland, a semiretired licensed practical nurse. It is also a place where kittens in need of special care, rescued by The Animal Center of Newtown, find refuge. Smudge and Tucker, an eight-ounce tabby kitten that arrived at the McFarlands’ on Saturday, September 11, need the skill of a caregiver that can bottle feed, and Dexter is happy to lend a helping tongue — his own style of TLC.

“Dexter will sit in front of the crate and jump up and down, hoping we will take the kittens out,” said Ms McFarland. “He loves to lick them, and has this motherly streak in him,” she said. Justice also adds a heaping helping of puppy love, she said, carefully hopping his 125-plus pounds around the teensy kittens.

Always a soft touch for needy animals, Ms McFarland and her husband became Animal Center volunteers after center director Monica Roberto and Ms McFarland met last winter at a holiday party.

“We just clicked,” said Ms Roberto, visiting the foster family September 13. “We are always on the lookout for people who have that special skill of being able to bottle feed, so when Mindy mentioned that she did… Well, here we are.”

It is devastating to hear of families put out of their homes due to foreclosure or eviction, but equally heartbreaking are the fates of the thousands of cats and other pets left to fend for themselves when financial woes make it impossible for people to care for them. In Newtown, said Ms Roberto, there are currently nearly 70 cats and kittens wandering free at two sites in town, and also in foster care with The Animal Center.

“There will always be free-roaming cats,” said Ms Roberto, “but this year, we are seeing a lot of superfriendly cats finding their ways to people’s doorsteps. These are not feral cats, but cats that apparently once had a loving home.”

As people lose their jobs and homes due to the recession, pets — cats in particular, because people believe they can fend for themselves — are abandoned.

The Animal Center recently put out a plea for assistance in covering the costs of neutering and vaccinating 30 cats found at one site in southern Newtown, and since the end of May, volunteers have been caring for another group of 25 cats in a Sandy Hook neighborhood, left behind when their caretaker was evicted from the property.

“We got a call from the woman just two days before she was evicted, claiming the cats were all strays that she had been feeding. There seem to be cats in every direction in that neighborhood,” Ms Roberto said. “We are identifying more every day in that area,” she added.

No Place For Cats

The Animal Center captures, spays or neuters, and vaccinates the stray cats, and returns the cats to the site, where makeshift shelters are also provided to protect the cats as best they can.

“We don’t have an actual shelter, so we have nowhere to bring them, other than back to the sites,” said Ms Roberto. Kittens, which are easier to place, are put into foster care whenever possible. Five volunteers go to the sites on a rotating basis every day and feed the cats, she said.

That is what Newtown Animal Control Officer Carolee Mason, an Animal Center volunteer, was doing on September 5, at one of the sites when she heard “an unbelievable screaming. I didn’t know what it was, or where the sound was coming from,” said Ms Mason. Walking all around the property she finally tracked down the source of the awful yowling. Wedged into a stone wall was a white kitten with a smudge of gray on top of his head. She searched for a mother cat or littermates, but with none in sight, she contacted Ms Roberto, who placed “Smudge” with the McFarlands.

“He was not in such bad shape as some,” said Ms Mason, “but he was starving. People think they can leave cats out, that cats can eat mice and get along, but they need more than that. We can’t take in cats at the pound, so The Animal Center has been helping us tremendously [with the stray cat population]. A lot of the pregnant cats found at these sites have been fostered by volunteers, and after giving birth, the mother cats are spayed and returned to the site, and the kittens put up for adoption.”

Many of the cats returned to the sites are adoptable, said Ms Roberto. “Some will make great pets, and some will be good barn cats, but we do need homes. It is very expensive to feed so many cats, and the weather is getting colder….”

Thankful For Volunteers

Ms Roberto said that she is thankful for the volunteers like the McFarlands who help out in special circumstances, such as feeding Smudge and Tucker by hand. “They not only bottle feed these babies, but act like a ‘mom’ to these orphaned kittens,” said Ms Roberto. It is time-consuming and tiring, with the kittens needing regular feedings around the clock.  So having an extra pair of hands — or paws, in the case of Dexter — for the TLC is always nice.

“It is rewarding to take care of special needs animals,” said Ms McFarland, “but it is also heart wrenching.” Not all of the rescued kittens survive, including the very first one that she fostered for Animal Center last winter. “He was only about three or four weeks old, and had a head trauma. He initially got better, but the trauma was too great for him to survive in the end. That’s the hard part of doing this,” she said.

While Mt Pleasant Animal Hospital has generously donated fluids and needles in the past so that volunteers can provide subcutaneous fluids to dehydrated cats and kittens rescued by The Animal Center, and Spay and Neuter Association of Newtown has assisted in the costs of neutering, there is a constant and growing need for funds to pay for the dozens of cats and kittens that need emergency and long-term care, Ms Roberto stressed.

To find out more about the rescue cats and to donate, visit www.AnimalCenter.org.

The recession has definitely affected the animal population in Newtown, said Ms Roberto, and the creatures are suffering as greatly as are many of their human counterparts.

“Smudge and Tucker are very lucky little kittens to have had Carolee find them, and to have the McFarlands and Dexter taking care of them,” she said.