This is Kevin the Kitten aka Agent K:
Last week Kevin joined the 60,000 club – an unenviable membership – as he became one of the estimated 60,000 cats and dogs abandoned each summer in France at the beginning of the holiday season. Kevin, who’s about two months old and has obviously been brought up in a house, probably with children as he’s quite used to being handled and cuddles up to you, was dumped on the side of a road in the forest near Villandraut.
Luckily for Kevin my daughter was taking her dog for a walk and heard him mewing. It was well over a kilometre to the nearest house, far too far for a kitten of that age to go so he can’t have strayed from home and in any case we plastered the area with posters and no one has rung to claim him.
People who live in the forest are used to people just dumping their animals there – when we lived there our neighbours even rescued a hamster from the undergrowth – usually it’s elderly dogs whose owners don’t want to pay for vets bills or to have them put down but abandoning kittens is also common, there’s an assumption that they’ll be able to look after themselves. Not at Kevin’s age they don’t, he’s a domestic kitten, not feral, besides he’s far too young to know how to hunt for himself and he’d probably have been supper for a fox or a buzzard within a couple of days. The vet who looked to see if Kevin had a chip said he’d probably only been there for a day, if that, as he was still in very good condition.
I’m not going to express my opinion of the person who dumped Kevin – the words would scorch even an electronic page – all I can say is that I hope there’s a special and very painful corner of Hell reserved for all those who see animals as disposable. But I will ask this, If you can’t be bothered to look after your animals’ progeny properly why don’t you get them sterilised? The sad truth is that it’s cheaper to leave your unwanted puppies and kittens by the wayside like fast food wrapping than take them to the vet for an op. And so people like us who do get our pets seen to are usually the ones who pick up the pieces. If we took Kevin to the SPCA he’ll probably be put down almost immediately, they’re overrun at this time of year and it’s always difficult to rehome black animals in France, they’re regarded as being unlucky. So it looks like that unless we can find a home for him he’ll end up here. He’s absolutely enchanting but we’ve already got two cats, one of whom was rescued in similar circs from a woodpile and who is going into a deep depression over this energetic little intruder.
Would anyone like a kitten? Delightful, housetrained, purrs a lot, will do anything for cheese, used to dogs, Bordeaux area…
Victoria Corby 