DEER LAKE, N.L. — A trio of abandoned kittens is lucky to be alive after being found by a trucker in Cormack Sunday morning.
The young cats, estimated to be between 10 and 12 weeks old, were noticed by Clyde Compton as he was driving his milk tanker.
Compton waded through waist-deep snow to check out the black huddled mass he saw from high up in the cab of his truck. He scooped up the kittens and brought them to his home in Deer Lake before continuing on his route to St. John’s with the milk delivery.
Compton was en route back from St. John’s and unavailable for an interview Monday. In a post on Facebook though, he noted, the cats likely would have been buried in by a snowplow that was just about five minutes away from their location.
The cats were eventually picked up from the Compton home by Deer Lake Kitty Rescue. Tanya White, chair of the rescue group, is fostering the cats on behalf of the NL West SPCA, which has agreed to help get the fortunate animals adopted.
White said it seems the animals were tossed into the snowbank from a vehicle. She said there were no tracks, human or animal, around where they were found and it was unlikely they had been there for long because they would not have survived any more than a few hours in the conditions.
There are farms in the area where they were found, but White doesn’t believe they are barn cats that have adapted to living in harsher conditions.
She wonders if whoever left them may have thought the cats would somehow become toughened barn cats.
“I have a really big heart and I don’t like to think anyone would be so blatantly cruel as to just leave them there,” said White. “Maybe it was someone in a hard financial position and thought they would survive on their own. Ignorance is bliss, if you think about it like that.”
She added that dropping the unwanted cats off at the pound, even if they eventually had to be euthanized, is a far more humane way to deal with them.
The RCMP have been notified of the incident and White is encouraging anyone who knows anything about where the cats came from to please notify the Deer Lake detachment to help with the investigation.
The cats, which White said were hypothermic when rescued, were all checked by a veterinarian Monday. Despite needing to be dewormed and one having an upper respiratory infection, they are all doing fine.
They even now have names related to the weather conditions they were found in. A long-haired female has been named Shiver, while the short-haired female and male have respectively been named Stormy and Flurry.
Anyone who would like to make a donation to help cover the costs to care for the cats, or is interested in adopting them, can contact the NL West SPCA.
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