On Italian Mother’s Day 2018, my boyfriend, my sister and I took a trip to see family in a small town here in Abruzzo called Campo di Fano. The town has a number of resident stray cats who are fed by the locals but that’s as far as caring for them goes. Every year the females have several litters of kittens, most of whom die in their first few weeks of life. In the past I have bought medicine and treated the eye-infections of kittens but I wasn’t in a position to do more than that.

This time, I simply had to do more. Our aunt showed us the latest litter born in their ‘cantina’, which is a traditional Italian storage place in an external part of the house – no heating, no light, nothing. The kittens’ mum was a first-time mum – she was actually from a litter from two years earlier who I had cared for. Often, first-time mum cats don’t successfully raise a litter. They don’t know what they’re doing and it kind of becomes a practice run for future litters. My aunt told me that 5 kittens had been born about two weeks before but two had already died. The three left had opened their eyes but they were now stuck closed again because of the typical infection that gets passed around the colony. While we were handling the kittens, they were obviously crying but I could see that their mum was almost completely disinterested in what we were doing. She was also too thin, so I decided to check her for milk and could see she was no longer lactating. Not a good omen for such small kittens. I made a decision then and there that they were coming with me.

The first few weeks were hairy. The kittens needed to be fed every two hours and they needed to be stimulated to do their business. They spent a lot of time in-and-out of the vets for various check ups and treatments. Then, after about two weeks, the middle kitten, Ray, became very sick with parvovirus. He fought very hard but at the beginning of July, he lost his fight.

Despite their difficult beginning to life, Bud and Rose continued to grow into beautiful, loving cats. After everything we’d been through, there was no other option but to keep them as part of our extended family. Bud went to live with my sister, her boyfriend and their two other cats (which now total 5!) and Rose stayed with us, becoming very much my boyfriend’s cat, despite the fact that it was me getting up to feed her every two hours in those early days!