Sunday 13th May 2018 – Mother’s Day in Italy.

On a beautifully sunny day, after going for lunch in a local trattoria with my partner and his parents to celebrate La Festa Della Mamma, we decided to swing by his tiny (200 people) home “town” to visit his aunts and uncles. The place, for me, is paradise and I long to move back there (when the time is right!).

It is, however, home to a significant unsterilised stray cat population.

A little bit of backstory

Just two years earlier, in 2016, we spent the entire summer living in the hamlet. It is the most peaceful place I have ever been, but the situation with the cats is pretty bad. A stray cat had a litter of kittens in a box outside my house, of which three females survived – one tortoiseshell and 2 gingers. At just a couple of weeks old, they developed significant eye infections, so I took them to the vet for treatment and isolated them in my bathroom to stop the mum cat moving them around so much. After two weeks of treatment, they were all healed.

It was one of these ginger kittens that was to become mum to Rose and her brothers 2 years later.

Finding Rose

When we got to the hamlet on Mother’s Day 2018 and saw 80-year-old Zia Antonietta, she excitedly told us about the kittens. She loves having the kittens around but we have very different ideas on animal care – in rural Italy, many people still believe that dogs and cats should be outside only, never in the house. They don’t believe in even buying actual cat food, let alone spay and neuter. It’s not from malice, they actually enjoy having the animals around, it’s just seriously old-school here. They’re also terrified of having to take responsibility for crippling vet bills.

We went down to the cantina together to see the new arrivals and my heart sank. At just two weeks old, two had already died, and the three surviving kittens already had serious eye infections caused by a strain of herpes virus (typical of uncared for colonies), and their mamma’s milk had basically dried up. When we picked them up and started handling them, Occhi, their mum, was completely disinterested, she showed zero sign of defending them, even though our dog was around.

I decided there and then that I was going to take them. I felt guilty taking them away from Zia Antonietta, even though I knew it was in the best interest of the kittens as well as their mum. The only way they were going to have even a small chance of surviving was by being hand-reared – if their infections weren’t already too far gone. The only problem? I was completely unprepared for such small bottle-babies, I didn’t have anything I needed except for a cat-carrier which just happened to be in the house, so we ended up rushing around Sulmona and the surrounding area, trying to find baby bottles and powdered milk on a Sunday afternoon in small-town Italy.

Unfortunately, we lost one little boy, Ray to parvo after a few weeks, despite the best veterinary care and a huge fight from him. Rose and her brother Bud continued to grow and thrive. Bud was adopted by my sister and her partner, who already had two cats and then came the time to find Rose a new home. I just couldn’t do it. I put off and delayed and put my head in the sand about making an adoption post for her on social media. My partner kept asking me if I’d had any success until, eventually, I told him that I just didn’t want to do it. I wanted to keep her. It took a while for him to give in to me, but give in he did. So here she stayed. ❤