most emotional day

In the early hours of the morning, around 4am, I woke up and heard a cat crying. At first I thought it was my cat Roari, but he was fast asleep at my feet. I then thought that it was Roari’s girlfriend who is a stray cat that always calls him. I went back to sleep.

At 7am, I heard the cat crying again. I go downstairs and tell my mum to give Roari’s girlfriend some food on her way out to work. 7:30am, my mum opens the front door. There is the tiniest ball of fluff at our front door.

The most emotional day of my life begins.

When my mum opened the door, she got shocked and called my sister. ‘Dalia, come here, look at this’. Hearing this, I run downstairs. There is a tiny kitten on our door step. After telling my mum to go to work and that I’d take care of the kitten, I bring the baby in. My sister calls the RSPCA who say to her, the cat is not in direct danger so it is not classed as an emergency case and we have to call our local vet, or come in for an appointment at 12pm.

I call my local vet, they are closed. I rap the kitten in a blanket and hold her close to me so that she can get warm. She shivers and finds it very hard to keep her head up.

8:30am. I call my local vet. They tell me to bring her in straight away. 20 minutes later I am at the vets. They check her out. They tell me she is weak but she seems like a fighter. They confirm that she is a girl. They ask me if I want to keep her, to which I reply, ‘Yes’.

They tell me she is 5 weeks old. My first thought: ‘too young to be away from her mum’. They tell me she has diarrhoea. She also has flees. I am provided with milk, a hot water bottle, a new towel and some medication for the diarrhoea. I am told that events could go either way, she will either get better or die.

I am told by the vets that I should take her home. She is at risk of infection at the vet because of the amount of pets that come in and out. I bring her home. After 30 minutes. She seems to get worse. She jumps. She is finding it hard to breathe. I call the vet and leave the house to make the short journey back to the vets. 10 minutes of the 20 minute journey goes by. I look in the cage at this tiny kitten who looks so much like Roari when he was a baby. She is still. The vet confirms her death.

To the person who left that little kitten on my doorstep, I have a few things to ask. Why did you leave her there? Why didn’t you ring the door bell? Why didn’t you knock on the door? Why didn’t you wait until the morning? Why didn’t you wrap her in a towel? Why couldn’t you have taken care of her? She could have been eaten by a fox, there are loads of them in our area.

I hope that you suffer the same way that the poor defenceless 5 week old kitten did. I know the kitten was dumped on my doorstep by a human because she was too weak to hold her own tiny head up. She was too small to get up one step, let alone 3 steps. She was hidden behind my recycling bin. If I ever find you, God forbid what I would do. I hope her death stays on your conscious for the rest of your life.

Too many emotions have run through me today. Shock, scared, joy, worry, hope, pain, sadness, heartache. Today I learnt that humans are actually disgusting. Being a vet is probably one of the hardest jobs. I am glad I did not name the tiny kitten. It would have been 10 times harder to see her die. I wish I had opened the door earlier. I am sorry.

R.I.P Little Kitten.