Hello, I’m the silly billy who found some abandoned day old barn kittens and decided I would keep them.

It was a hot (38 degrees Celsius) summer morning in Kansas when I went out to feed the barn cats and noticed a pile of kittens laying in the grass. I knew the female barn cat had had her babies the day before, but I didn’t expect to see them for a few weeks. It appeared she didn’t want these ones (and yes, we did discuss it) and I couldn’t just leave them there (they would probably get eaten pretty soon - it IS Kansas) so I took them inside. Thus began a marathon - weeks of learning about tiny cats, syringe/bottle feedings, wiping tiny bottoms, weighing to ensure proper weight gain, brushing little wiggly things with a tooth brush to remind them of their mother, and of course the schedule of repeating this routine every 3-4 hours, day in, day out. Luckily they were so cute, because I had quite underestimated the difficulties of sleep deprivation on a farm!

First up I thought, it’s fine, I’ll just help them until they are eating solids, and then they can go back to the barn. It was my husband who suggested we could use some house cats to deter mice, and of course husbands are right (or in this instance he was) so we trained these guys to live along side us in the house, and they became our best little buddies.

To begin with, when I first found them, there were three. The biggest was a boy, white fur, full tail. He didn’t make it to sunset on the day I found them. I think he was already very dehydrated, as he didn’t ‘mew’ at me when I picked him up like the other two did. The girl, black and white; would later be named Thistle, and had a stumpy tail. The smallest, a little boy, all black, no tail at all, got named Snuffles by my husband. I wanted to name him something cool, like ‘darkness’ or ‘night furry’ but during his first few weeks, he had an upper respiratory infection and an eye infection, and he uh, well.. snuffled. At first I really didn’t think he would make it. He was much smaller than Thistle, and was obviously pretty sick. At one stage, I was so sure he would pass. My husband (right again) told me not to give up on him just yet, that as he was still trying, to give him some more time. Each day, despite my worries, he grew a tiny little bit more, and by the time we knew he would be ok, the name Snuffles had stuck. The vet’s I had taken him to had warned me that as he had no tail he may be incontinent ( a condition in tailless cats known as Manx Syndrome) however as he grew (and grew!) there were no signs this would be an issue, and once again the little guy proved how lucky he was. Snuffy and Thistle were with us to stay and quickly became part of our family.

My daughter, four at the time, would read them stories, tuck them into bed for naps and they would help her draw pictures and play with her toys. They would sit by her while she took a bath, hide under her clothes and chase her over the house. They would hide in my husbands boots, help with the laundry, sweeping floors, and whenever we couldn’t find them, they would sure enough be found sleeping on the dining room chairs. We had to be very careful not to sit on them, particularly when Snuffy would sit on the black computer chair - his favorite spot. He was as pretty hard to see!

As time passed we made the difficult decision we had to move our family back to Australia (I’m Australian and my daughter was born here) and of course we intended to take our cats. Vaccinations, import permits, identification documents, flights, and quarantine all had to be planned for them and although we left in January this year (so my daughter could start school) they were not ready to leave when we did. It has been nearly a year of planning while they wait in the US to be reunited with us. It costs a lot of money to import cats (for good reasons) and although we have saved and saved (and still saving!) We are still a little short of funds - we have about 75% of what we need to get them here. We don’t want to fall at the last hurdle. Please help our family have a happily ever after, and donate to get our kitties home with us where they belong. My husband doesn’t think this strategy will work in raising funds, and it REALLY would be nice if I could be right about this one. Every little bit counts. We are nearly there!

Thank you for reading our story. All funds will go to Snuffles and Thistle’s safe transport to Australia.