The story of some marine kittens...
By Trudi Malan:
On Wednesday, 9 January 2013, somebody lost a little bit of their humanity on the rocks in front of the Cape St Francis Lighthouse.
Don’t fear. The good news is we found the “lost humanity” and he or she is welcome to collect it at any time. We have managed to bottle feed the five little pieces of humanity, aka kittens.
With an added amount of compassion and care they are now a few weeks older and definitely starting to look for a permanent residence where they will be allowed the opportunity to supply hours of enjoyment.
At present the five members of the Lighthouse family are called Nemo, Dory, Bubbles, Guppy and Crush – mostly after the characters of the Finding Nemo film seeing that they were left next to the ocean to learn to swim, I can only presume. Maybe the owner who “lost” them took the Afrikaans name for an octopus, seekat, a little to literally and thought that seekat’s are created by dropping little kittens into the ocean. Unfortunately that is not how evolution works.
I fully understand that an unwanted litter of kittens can be a huge inconvenience, but I would appeal to anybody who finds themselves in this position to rather take the unwanted babies to the vet or to the SPCA, they definitely have more humane methods of dealing with the “problem”.
We are now at the point where we are looking to find homes for the various members of the Lighthouse family. They may not be pure bred, but they have been hand reared and treated like royalty. No spitting and hissing from this well behaved bunch.
They also have a great story to tell and although they may have used up one of their nine lives very early on in their existence, they are all in agreement that what does not kill you makes you stronger. Like all toddlers they refuse to sit still at present, which makes photographing them quite a challenge. But I have tried to in between feeding and playing to take some pictures, not very successfully I will admit.
If you are willing to help us provide a “happily ever after” ending, please contact Aloe Vet at 042 294 0647 or Trudi Malan on 082 940 5521.
(Please note that I am often feeding penguins and lately cats as well, so please leave a message if I don’t answer or rather send me an sms).
(edited)
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