Fluvia and Gremlin

Doug and I went to the river today to relax. It was blisteringly hot, so we took some river chairs and a cooler of beer...our recipe for unwinding. The fates had other plans.

Doug works, as I may have mentioned before, at a campground. This campground also schedules rafting/canoeing/floating trips on the Black River. To avoid other people, we went to where the camp buses take people to put them in the river. There is no one around in the afternoon during the week, so we had that stretch of river to ourselves...almost.

When we got there, two emaciated kittens ran up to us and started rubbing up against us. You could feel every one of their little bones. Doug said that they were outdoor cats and that the campground people were probably feeding them and that it was normal for them to be thin. We stayed at the river for about two hours. The kittens never let us out of their sight. They curled up around our cooler. They purred and purred. When we left, I cried.

I kept thinking about them and about how thin they were. I decided to take them some supper. I took a can of tuna fish and a good sized bowl of kibble. They were delighted to see me again, and even more delighted to see the food. They ate it all. That's a lot of food for two small (approximately 3 month old) kittens. They ate it all. Then they looked for more. That did it. I scooped them up and put them in my car. They curled up on the back floorboard and went to sleep while I drove home.

We have five cats and four dogs. We do not need more. But they need us. They are ensconced in my office with a litter box and water. They've had enough food for a while. Their names are Fluvia and Gremlin (that's what they told me). They are sleepy now and are pretty happy about everything. "What have I done?" keeps playing in my head, quickly followed by "how could I turn away?" Sigh. Somehow, we'll make it work. We always do.