Imagine my surprise at work when I get a text of a picture of a newborn kitten.

My close rescue colleague received a call from someone about a mama cat with a litter of babies located deep within machinery at a landfill. The mom is too far into the machine to be reached; however, one kitten had wandered away and couldn’t get back to mom. If left alone, that baby would’ve died without mom, so she did what all of us crazy cat ladies do, and brought him home.

Being the crazy cat lady that I am, I didn’t even ask my husband; I began making arrangements to work from home the next day to bottle feed this baby. I don’t know if the name will stick, but for now I’ve named him Stuart.

We think he was 3 days old when we got him. He suckles on my fingers, but so far we haven’t been able to get him to latch onto a nipple. We’re tube feeding him right now instead.

As I write, I’m on day 2 of feeding him every two hours. I’m becoming  a little delirious from the sleep schedule. Luckily, my colleague is on her way to get him so that I have a break.

She’s going to return to the landfill and try to trap mom and kittens. The ideal situation is to reunite Stuart with the rest of the group, and have another volunteer foster them. Otherwise, we’ll be bottlefeeding Stuart for a couple weeks longer.