The Adventures of Star, the Runaway Pregnant Cat
Long story short: An adorable stray leaves a trail of destruction and heartbreak, as well as requiring several rescues, on the way to delivering a beautiful litter of kittens.
Act I
During the last week of spring, a small, stray calico cat appeared in our backyard. At first wary, she was clearly quite hungry and soon took up on our old patio. The young children of our musician neighbor next door dubbed her Ziggy Stardust, which we eventually shortened to Star.
Star's appetite was endless and, concerned she was either pregnant or had a tapeworm, we finally caught her for a trip to the vet. It turned out she was very pregnant, and ready to drop any day. She was young— at six months still a kitten herself — and had no tracking chip. It was also obvious we couldn’t release her back in the wild. We cleared out my studio and set up boxes of old t-shirts for her to nest. But nope! Star insisted on pulling open the door to my supply closet to crawl over cans of spray paint and power tools and nestle behind an old Mac monitor. I removed everything dangerous and we waited.
Over the next two weeks Star settled in, and even came to a détente with our 1-year-old male cat Bear. The vet warned us, however, we would have to keep mama and kittens away from Bear, as male cats can be a threat to offspring not their own. Each night we'd lock the door to the studio to keep them separated.
Act II
Star became restless and we suspected she was almost due. Before dawn on July 3, she began yowling frantically, and there was a sudden crash. In a panic, the expectant cat had knocked aside the wood I'd used to block a broken vent in the floorboard, ripped out a metal plate, and squeezed her pregnant bulk into the narrow ductwork under the house.
Now we were frantic. When it became clear she couldn't pull herself back through the tiny vent, I pried open the outdoor panel to the crawlspace under our house. Homes in this part of North Carolina don't have basements, and the clearance under the floor was only 12-18 inches in spots. It being summer, our heat was off —and our central air died last summer— but we didn't want the poor thing giving birth stuck in our HVAC system.
I could hear her meowing but couldn't locate her position as the sound echoed along the many tin tubes. Finally, after hours of crawling around on my belly, and tearing apart ducts in 3 different areas under the house, I pushed aside a section of pipe to find Star's furry face. She meowed her thanks, jumped down— and immediately took off for the farthest corner of the crawlspace. That's gratitude for ya, I thought.
Afraid that she might be injured, we thought it prudent to get her to the vet but she refused to come to the food I brought with me, and avoided every effort to trick her into the cat carrier. Now we were concerned she'd drop the kittens under the house. After several hours, my wife and I finally set up a spot to catch her at the crawlspace door, but she slipped out of my grasp as we dropped the panel and escaped into the woods across the busy street. We were devastated.
Act III
Over the rest of the afternoon we spotted Star two more times — once when she briefly returned to the yard — but were unable to get near her. The last time I was able to track her to a dilapidated shed in a neighbor’s yard. And then she disappeared.
We posted alerts on all the community listservs, put out food in multiple places, and walked around the block banging cat food cans. We had no doubt that by now she had given birth, but had no idea if she or the kittens were injured after squirming through the air ducts. After two days of no sign, I set out to go door to door check to everyone’s yards.
My first stop was my friend’s shed, an aged, disintegrating structure jammed full of lumber, farm tools and piles of stuff — and surrounded by hound dogs. It was hard just to open the door. Surely this was a terrible place to drop kittens. And yet the floor had a large hole in it, so there was easy access in and out. Trying to think like a cat, I looked in every nook and behind every container. Just about to give up, I craned around the old-fashioned space heater and gazed into a broken section of wall behind a leaning stack of drywall and metal grates— and saw something that looked like a rat on its back.
Carefully moving around to the other side of the crumbling drywall, I leaned as far as I could, stuck my phone in the opening and took a photo. And there was Star —and a passel of kittens, possibly up to five. We figured they had been born on the Fourth of July.
She had chosen well, as the nest was unreachable and yet offered her several routes of retreat. She was deathly quiet — until I opened the can of cat food I’d brought with me. Meowing hungrily, she came out and began to eat, and I was just about to reach for her when one of the hound dogs stuck his head through the hole in the floor and barked. Star hissed and leaped on his nose, and mewling exploded from the hidden kittens. I retreated from the chaos and texted my neighbor to secure his dogs.
After that, Star stayed out of sight, or fled down the hole and tried to lead me away from the kittens. The precarious nature of the many piles in the shed kept me from moving too much at a time, or setting a safe trap, so we continued to leave food inside and hoped she wouldn’t move the nest as we figured out the best way to rescue everyone at once. Each visit I would stick my phone in the wall space and take photos to check on the litter's condition.
Things took a dire turn on the 7th when we learned that Hurricane Elsa was tracking to pass right over our area the next day— and I realized one of the kittens hadn’t been moving. My wife and I made a desperate bid to get them all out immediately. We blocked the hole in the floor, and meticulously moved dozens of heavy items by flashlight— an hours-long, multi-step process in sweltering heat, considering it was a risk to open the door — all the while talking to Star so she knew it was us.
We eventually discovered the grating was actually several large dismantled dog cages, and used that to construct a fence around the wall. I put out some food, and as an exhausted Star came out and began to eat, I scooped her up into the big cat carrier a friend had lent us. Finally able to move the crumbling drywall, we gently placed the kittens in their own small carrier and got them to safety.
Sadly, the 5th kitten didn’t make it. We think it may have been still born, or injured, or rolled away from the litter and succumbed early on — we’ll never know. And yet, this was the kitten I first saw when looking behind the heater, the only clue, the only reason, that I had found the nest. The 5th kitten may have died, but it saved the rest. We took it home and gave it a hero’s funeral, burying it in the spot in the yard where we first saw Star.
Epilogue
Moma cat and the rest of her litter appear to be doing fine, and are soon scheduled for their next vet visit. And that’s where we could use your help.
A month ago we didn’t know this creature existed and now she has turned our life and household upside down. We freely accepted our burden when we took a pregnant kitten in, but the bills for these lovely ‘free’ cats the universe has bestowed on us are quickly accumulating — Star herself has eaten 3 month’s worth of cat food in 3 weeks — and the additional costs are coming far faster than we anticipated or can handle at this moment.
(I haven’t had time to get an estimate on the extensive damage to the HVAC system, but I didn’t hesitate to wreck it to rescue her then, and would do so again in a heartbeat.)
Friends and neighbors have been asking all week how they can help, so we decided to launch this GoFundMe. If you are able to kick in a few dollars and help these thrice-rescued kitties, that’s wonderful; if not, we hope you appreciated the adventures of Star ... who is now finally home and happily asleep next to her babies.
PS — We dubbed the kittens the Fab Four: John, Paul, George and Ringo — or sometimes, because they were born on July 4th, refer to them as George, John, Tom and Ben (because if anyone was Ringo in 1776, it was Ben Franklin). They’ll be sure to tell us their real names later.
PSS — And yes, every single air vent in the house is now secured and sealed.