(Warning - extremely long blog post ahead !) One morning last week, Justin (if you are new to the blog, you can read about Justin over here) came to me to tell me that he had heard kittens crying in the farm workshop area & on further investigation had discovered two kittens which had fallen into the tiny gap between 2 of our storage containers (their mother had given birth to them on top of the containers, thinking that this was a safe place). These containers are permanent fixtures and are bolted/set into cement slabs with a roof running along the top as they get really hot inside. We use them for storing farm chemicals/insecticides, crop seed and spare parts etc. I decided to go and take a look. The photo above shows the gap between the 2 containers where the kittens had fallen - I know, it's hard to believe that they would even fit down there !
This above is a close-up of the gap. It was a little wider inside than it looks (but only just) due to the corrugated sides of the container - the kittens were wedged in there & could not move/turn around. They were resting on the 'lip' or rim of the container at the bottom, it was hot, there were bees flying in & out of the gap & I was LIVID when I found out that they'd been trapped there for 2 days & nights and none of the farm/workshop staff had bothered to alert us because as far as they are concerned, cats are like vermin anyway so the kittens were just left to die. THANK GOODNESS for Justin (who has worked beside me for countless years and saved so many many animals with me), as if it wasn't for him finding them & alerting me, these poor helpless creatures would have died a slow & lingering death. (The marks you see on the sides of the container were from a fresh tree branch we used at first to try and scoop them up & back onto the top of the container - to no avail !)I should mention that at this stage I had managed to see both kittens by shining a torch (flashlight) into the gap. I was relieved to see that they were not newborn as their eyes were open, & I estimated them to be around 4 weeks or so. (If they'd been newborns, I don't think they would've survived as long).
When I saw the mother cat desperately pacing up & down the container roof and crying pitifully for her babies, I realised that these were Emily's kittens as she is a stray farm cat which I care for. (You can read her story over here). She had also not come for her food for 2 nights - little did we know that it was because she'd had kittens who were now in distress & that she refused to leave them. (Just after this photo was taken we gave her food & water up on top of the container).Emily is the only stray farm cat (to my knowledge) who has not been spayed as she is too wild to catch & put in a travel crate to take to the vet & Justin & I have both been bitten quite badly by her whilst trying to do this in the past. To make matters worse, I am no longer covered by my rabies vacination as the booster shot was due when I was in the early stages of this pregnancy & as a result I could not have it done. (So I have to be very careful when handling stray animals now that I am pregnant.) I don't know how, but I am going to have to find a solution to this problem soon, as she has to be spayed !
After trying to use a stick to gently scoop them up had failed, my husband (who by this stage had come up to the house for lunch & had been dragged into the whole rescue operation !) suggested that we try to move the containers apart by gently forcing them with the use of a hydraulic jack. We hoped to make the gap just big enough for the kittens to crawl out on their own. For this we needed a tractor (above), which he quickly pulled off a planting job at the bottom of the farm, plus we had a total of 10 staff members assisting us ! 
Here you can see my husband & some of the staff assisting him to set the hydraulic jack between the 2 containers. Justin is standing in the foreground of the photo, in the black t-shirt & denim shorts. The hydraulic jack plan didn't work. So we were back to square one again ! (Meanwhile the kittens were mewing pitifully, very distressed by all the noise around them).
We now decided to remove part of the roof covering the containers, our only other option was to try and 'fish' them out from the top. Here above you can see one of our gardeners, Hemmed, beginning to remove the iron sheeting & roll it back.
We then got some thin steel poles & asked the farm welder to quickly weld them all together to make one long pole. We fashioned a wide hook at the end, which I wrapped in layers of soft masking tape so that it would not hurt the kittens. Justin, Isaac (another one of our new, casual gardeners) & Hemmed climbed onto the roof and tried to use this hook to gently scoop each kitten up, & gently carry it to the surface. Easier said than done, it was a very tricky exercise due to the gap being so narrow. This part of the 'rescue operation' took around 3 hours ! Eventually everyone cheered as first one kitten was brought up, and then half an hour later, the other ! We placed them both into a travel crate (Emily had hidden away in fear at this stage & was nowhere to be seen) as there was no way I was going to leave them up there alone, & brought them down to our house.
The kittens were both (naturally) terrified and very shaken. We let them out of the crate into a quiet room (above) and although they were so wild (hissing and spitting if we came too close) I managed to see when they walked and moved that neither was injured in any way. I realised they were too young to lap milk from a bowl (we tried !) let alone eat solids. I have raised orphaned kittens before, & the only way to feed them at this age is with a syringe. Impossible with these 2 so wild ! Of course nothing is better for any living creature than to be with it's mother at this age, so we knew we had to reunite them with Emily as soon as we could. I was also worried that after almost 3 days of not being able to feed them, her milk may have begun to dry up.
Justin & I waited until nightfall, then returned to the containers where she was pitifully crying on the top, calling out to her babies who were no longer there. I lifted the crate up for her to see them, and she went crazy ! The kittens, too, began to meow when they saw her ! As she usually lives on top of the roof of Justin's house, we decided to take both her & the kittens back there. This entailed a walk through the workshops, across the yard, on to a road & down to staff quarters & I never thought that she would follow us, but as scared as she is of human's - she did !
Once we got to Justin's garden, we released the kittens from the crate & Emily took them to safety underneath a chicken coop. The following day Justin told me that she had moved them up onto the roof of his house during the night, and was happily feeding them.
Later that same night, Emily came to our house for food as she always does. Only this time it was different. She meowed and weaved between by ankles, rubbing and purring and following me through the house (she usually sticks to the kitchen & store areas only) & would not leave me alone, purring loudly and head butting my ankles as she did so ! I'd like to think that in some way, she was thanking me for helping to save her kittens, I'd like to think that in some way she now knows that not all humans are to be feared.
I have since asked the workshop staff to nail planks of wood across the gaps (roof side) between the containers, so that this never happens again. As they are a God fearing bunch, I also told them in no uncertain terms that not telling anyone about these kittens to begin with, was not very Christian-like and that God would punish them one day for turning their backs on animals in need - their day would come, and it it were to EVER happen again & I found out about it ? Well !
I rewarded all the people who helped me with the rescue operation and thanked Justin for alerting me to the fact that these kittens even existed - for he, too, used to think that dogs & cats were worthless beings - until he came to work with me several years ago & realised that quite the opposite was true ! I've managed to change just one person's attitude towards animals & that has had a domino effect ..... and for me, that is better than just sitting back and doing nothing at all. As one of my favourite sayings goes "To change one life, is to change the world entire"........
