A post by the mom
You were promised an adventure story - here goes:
On Saturday a post went up on Facebook about a woman in a domestic violence situation who was trying to leave but needed to know a mom and kittens were safe. If you know anything about DV situations, a lot of people won't leave because there are very few shelters that will take animals and they fear what will happen if they are left behind.
A friend asked if I could take them since I didn't have fosters at the time. While I always want to help, I do have limits and mine is there has to be some sort of rescue backup for vetting and adoption placement. That fell into place and I agreed to go pick them up and foster.
Now, here is where I will add a couple of caveats - first, we all should have asked a few more questions about "kittens" and the weather. We have gotten snow here in Ohio but it is clear where I live so I didn't really think about it. The woman did say maybe we should wait a few days, but that made me nervous. Also, this is not my first rodeo so while I agreed to go get them, I was taking someone with me.
We drove about an hour, found the turn off and realized we were driving onto a track of driveway not really a great road and there were no other tire tracks. But we had made it that far and decided to just finish up and not have to worry about trying to come back. We drove down the road, turned left onto what we thought was another drive way and ended up having to park a ways from the house since it was snow and I didn't want to risk getting stuck in their front yard.
My friend and I trekked to the house with the carriers I brought and the lady came to the door. We got 3 kittens into carriers (after realizing they were about 5 months old - so again, ask a few questions. we still would have taken them, but I would have brought bigger carriers) She had mom in a pop up crate and said we could just take that. But one kitten was loose in the house. She tried to get it and came back out and said she couldn't.
We weren't comfortable waiting around so headed back to the car. As we were loading up, she yelled she had the last one. We got that one safely in a carrier, wished her well and got in my car to head out.
We got almost back to the top of the hill when the front wheels lost traction and we started to spin. Back up and try again, to no avail. We did notice a slightly flatter line off to my left so we backed up and tried to make a run at that.
Nope - we ended up sliding sideways, perpendicular to the driveway and about a foot from a fairly large tree.
Thankfully we still had cell service so after a quick search we found a tow company and they said they could be out in about 30 minutes. Nothing to do now but wait. We kept our eyes open since we weren't too far from the house and had no idea who else lived back there.
Thankfully the tow truck showed up fairly quickly and they got us turned around and facing uphill. However, neither of us could get traction at the same spot I had gotten stuck earlier. He had me back and and as he was about to make another run, the kid with him walked up to that flatter line we had seen earlier and announces "it a driveway" - yep rocks and gravel and everything. The truck got a start and made it up there then reattached the winch and pulled us up to the flatter run that went straight back to the road.
Yes - we left them a really good review on google.
We finally made it home but upon letting everyone out at my house, we discovered mom is not a fan of the kittens and was hissing and growling at them. Not really surprising considering their ages. My friend agreed to take mom to her house since she has a cage space where mom could decompress.
Meet Merritt - named after the towing company
We did pick up Chinese for dinner since it ended up being an entire afternoon adventure not just a couple of hours. This was one of the fortunes:
The kittens have settled in here. They are a little shy but fairly social. Mom is also social. There are 2 boys and 2 girls. Mom and the girls will be spayed on Friday, the boys neutered a little later when we can get appointments.
Either way, they are all safe and I hope the lady now feels she can get out and get somewhere safer. I don't know her circumstances and I wasn't going to ask. But I hope this little bit of kindness helped her.
