this is Freya

On Friday, my neighbor brought us this cat, and asked us to temporarily care for it. She told us it was thrown out of a moving car on the highway. I don’t understand how someone could do such a thing- this is the sweetest, most friendly cat ever. 

We set her up in our spare bedroom and noticed right away she had quite a large belly on a small frame. I suspected she was pregnant and mentioned it to the neighbor, who immediately said oh no, her friend who was interested wouldn’t want a pregnant cat. But it only took us one day to fall in love with her and want to keep her ourselves. 

We took her to a vet and they did x-rays -no broken bones!- and confirmed yes, she was expecting four or five kittens. Her paws are scraped up and she had a small cut near one eye, but otherwise seems okay. I’m sure she’s bruised and sore though. 

Then drove her to animal control because we felt obligated to report the incident, and thought someone might be looking for her (as the person who threw her out of a car may not have been the owner). She was scanned several times- no microchip. After a lot of discussion the shelter agreed to support us in fostering the kittens, get them all vaccinated and fixed, and then after the babies are weaned and up for adoption, we can officially adopt Freya. 

Upon coming home from the vet and shelter visit she spent the whole next day chilling in the carrier- I thought she might want to keep her kittens in there but also set up several other places for her to choose from. 

She ended up having her kittens on the guest bed- in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. She didn’t have four or five kittens- she had six! But the smallest one didn’t make it through the night. 

Next morning (or rather, later that same morning after we’d all tried to get a few hours’ sleep) she was still on the bed with them. I thought she would have moved them already. She greeted us, jumped down to eat the food I offered, then went to a box I’d put next to the bed, sat in it and meowed at me. She looked up at her kittens on the bed, looked at me, meowed again. I didn’t think she’d want me to handle them on the very first day, but also thought hey, it’s an opportunity to get their birth weight so I got the digital kitchen scale, one by one took their weights and set them in the box with mom. She settled right down with them. 

I’ve had cats most of my life (aside from college years) but never before kittens in the house!