Neptune and his litter mates were actually born in my yard to a feral mom cat that I have been trying to trap and get spayed for years. The mom, who I named Star, did not live in my yard. But she apparently felt that my yard was a nice safe place to use as a nursery and frequently came to my yard to give birth. As a long time feral cat, Star was pretty savvy about traps and kept herself and her kittens far away from them.
But in the early evening of a chilly November day, Neptune got a little too curious and wandered up onto our pool deck. My roommate saw him and called me over to make sure the kitten was going to be OK. We watched for a minute, not wanting to spook him, but sure enough, Neptune found the pool steps and fell into the pool.
Thankfully, we had just recently drained the water level to down to about an inch of water in preparation of repairing the leaking liner so Neptune was not in any danger of drowning. He was, however, stuck in the pool and we had to get him out. My roommate went to grab a cat carrier and I climbed down into the cold water to try and catch the completely feral (wild) kitten.
Disclaimer: Do not attempt this at home. If you try to grab a feral kitten with your hand, you will get hurt. Feral kittens can be just as dangerous as their adult counterparts. I have a lot of experience handling feral kittens since they are one of the types of kittens I foster and even I would have rather used a humane trap to trap him since it is much safer. Unfortunately, the combination of him being wet and the weather being cold made it so that I could not wait until I could rent a trap without endangering his health. If you are ever in a situation like this, call an animal professional right away.
Luckily, I was able to safely grab Neptune, get him into a carrier, in the house and set up with a warming disk. I was also able to finally not only trap his litter mates, but at long last, his mom. The kittens all stayed with me to be fostered for socialization to go up for adoption. The mom cat was too feral to ever be safely placed in a home, but was healthy so she was spayed and released back into my yard.
Socialization is never an easy task for a kitten, especially one who is already 2 months old like Neptune was, but ironically he turned out to be the most social of his litter. While his litter mates (who we named Kira, Pluto, Venus and Jupiter) were still hissing at me from the back of their crate, Neptune was curled up in my arms purring. His quick socializtion turned out to be a blessing when the whole litter suddenly got sick from a mysterious illness.
They were all sick, but the hardest hit were Pluto, Kira and Neptune. Kira, the only girl, turned out to just need to go to a different foster home where she was not having to compete with her siblings for food. Unfortunately, Pluto, who was the most feral, did not respond to treatment and we lost him. The rest of his sibilings did eventually get social enough to be able to be adopted into quiet adult only homes, but things were not looking so good for my little Neptune.
After a visit to the vet, Neptune came home to me with a ton of meds and needing to be syringe fed around the clock. His prognosis was very poor, but we wanted to give him a few more days to try and fight off whatever had taken his brother. For those two days, he spent every minute either by my side, or in my arms and when his purr started up again I knew we might have a chance.
It was a long hard road, but I am happy to say this special little guy managed to pull through and was adopted in to a loving forever home who admired his fighting spirit.
