Saving Emile

Emelie’s saga began when her people moved out of their condo in northwest Las Vegas, leaving her behind to fend for herself. The family moved away with their other cat, a dog and rabbits, but Emelie, about to give birth, had gone outside a couple of days before they relocated.

“They told another neighbor that if the cat didn’t come back before they moved, they were leaving her,” says Elisabeth Cunningham, a neighbor who started the chain of events to save the cat family. And that’s exactly what Emelie’s people did; they moved away without Emelie.

A week later, Emelie, making her bed on gravel, gave birth to her kittens. Cunningham was beside herself. She has a dog and didn’t know how to care for newborn kitties. So she called several local rescue groups. Then she called her veterinary clinic and they gave her some names and numbers.

The one person who agreed to pick them up and provide foster care was Darci Pfeiffer, a volunteer for Best Friends’ Focus on Felines campaign, whose mission is to keep cats safe and out of shelters across the country.

Pfeiffer contacted her friend Kelly Johnson, who’s a licensed veterinary technician, to see if she could foster Emelie and her babies. Johnson said yes. But when Pfeiffer and her husband Mark picked up the cats at 8:30 that night, Pfeiffer learned there were seven kittens. “I called Kelly and said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but there are seven kittens.’” That many kittens didn’t faze Johnson, who told Pfeiffer, “Bring them all over.”

The kittens are now 2 weeks old and are barely starting to open their eyes.  And they all have names — mostly after cows because the kittens are all black and white. The girls are named Siri, Dahanni and Devon, and the boys are Brahman, Dex, Jersey and Bermuda (so-named because he has a triangle on his head). Emelie was named after Cunningham’s granddaughter, who turned 6 the day the cats were rescued.

On top of being nursed by Emelie, the kittens’ diets are supplemented with cat formula.  “She’s [Johnson]helping the mom gain weight and helping her recuperate by not having to feed all at the same time. She rotates the babies,” Pfeiffer says.

Emelie has become protective of her babies. A few days after she arrived at Johnson’s home and saw that Johnson was removing her kittens to feed them, Emelie carried them two at a time and hid them under the bed. “It was cute,” Pfeiffer says. “She’s a good mama.”

Knowing that Emelie and her kittens are now safe, Cunningham says, is difficult for her to put into words. She had started feeding Emelie, who’s very friendly toward people, but she felt helpless about what to do with her babies. Cunningham couldn’t sleep at night knowing they were living on rock with no shelter except for a small recess in the condo building wall.

“They were exposed for all to see,” Cunningham says. “Saving this little cat and her babies means so much to me. I prayed for help, I was so afraid for them. I didn’t know what to do. I kept calling and trying to get someone to help us.”

And that’s what the Focus on Felines campaign is all about, community members helping cats in their neighborhoods, says Shelly Kotter,  campaign specialist for the program. “This is such a great example of how a neighborhood can make a difference in the lives of their community cats,” Kotter says. “Working together with local resources, they have helped save lives.”

Cunningham is relieved Pfeiffer came forward when she did. “Sometimes I just cry, I’m so happy,” Cunningham says. “I was so in love with the mama. She was making such a valiant effort to take care of her kittens. I can’t even begin to tell you how good it feels to have them safe.”

Photos courtesy of Darci Pfeiffer