Please pray for us

As those of you who follow us know, we are going through the darkest hours of our lives for all the reasons I explained in detail in previous newsletters, and just as we thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

At the beginning of October, one of the hottest and longest heat waves in the history of this country came to make our already difficult situation even more unbearable than it was; both Jackie and I became very ill and extremely weak, causing us to lose all our physical and mental strength.

Despite it all, we had to continue with our duties at the sanctuary of course and taking care of our feral cats, especially the little ones who need our help and care to survive.

On Thursday week, during a public holiday long weekend, while Jackie was in bed with a fever, I went out to take care of our ferals and while refilling their feeding stations, a small male black kitten, about 4 months old, came out of nowhere crying for help.

I placed him at Cheeky and Frankie’s feeding station, fed him and called Jackie to come help me and so together we could decide what to do about this emergency. The kitten had had an infection in his eyes that had already healed, he had lost one eye while the other was OK but full of eye gunk; other than that he looked healthy.

He was rather docile, so we managed to get his good eye clean and soothe him. Once clean and fed; he became playful and relaxed, so we thought we’d introduce him to Cheeky and Frankie and have them share the same feeding station.

The morning after, we went back very early to check on the newcomer and we were thrilled to see that he was safe and sound and had completely stabilized in this small colony.

Despite the extreme weather conditions (+40° C) and our precarious health, we stayed for a few hours to make sure he would do well out there and made the decision to have him stay with our feral female kittens Cheeky and Frankie until the long weekend was over and we could take him to the vet for a check-up, have him eventually fixed and released back to the colony where the other kittens have been living happily for about six months now.

On Saturday morning, we went back to check on our little ferals very early again, and we got the best news ever, some sort of miracle! In less than 48 hours, not only had the new kitten settled in, but we also met a tourist who had fallen in love with him and wanted to give him a forever home in the UK.

Cheeky and Frankie were doing well as usual, however, that morning the new kitten was nowhere to be found which seemed rather odd considering he was always around since the first day I found him.

So worried about his well-being, we started to fear the worst. I started searching the surroundings and sadly a few minutes later, I could spot him lying lifeless on the side of a busy road nearby; he had been run over.

It was a heartbreaking moment that shook us to the core. Within a couple of days, we went from the joy of thinking his life had been saved to the creepy nightmare of seeing his life taken away just a few hours away from being adopted and having a great future ahead of him after such a rough start in life.

This heart-wrenching event has been the latest of many in a row, and a break point in our life that took the very little strength we had left, considering our poor health, the heavy load we carry on our shoulders and everything we have been going through for years, and especially over the last few months.

On top of that, we felt extremely guilty for not being able to take this kitten in due to our housing situation that stops us from rescuing more cats.

I’m here today to ask you to pray for us, for our exhausted bodies and hopeless souls, to pray that life gives us a break so we can find some sort of relief and the necessary strength to carry on.

The loss of this poor kitten, whom we had named Blackie, just a few hours before he could finally find a loving forever home felt so absurd and unfair; it made us feel that no matter what sacrifices we make, everything is just in vain.

Please pray for us all, pray that something good happens to us so we can be saved and please pray for the sweet soul of Blackie, this beloved little kitten who was denied a happy life and left us feeling so hopelessly broken.

Paul