Animals

9 kittens rescued from under VA hospital building

By Dialynn Dwyer

When members of the Animal Rescue League of Boston responded to the veterans’ hospital in Jamaica Plain on Monday, they thought they were looking for a cat stuck under a building.

What they found were nine kittens.

An employee at the hospital, who had been feeding a feral cat, called the rescue league when she heard meowing under the building and the cat didn’t come out when she went to feed it. Senior rescue technician Danielle Genter responded to the hospital, but couldn’t hear a cat.

She stopped by later in the day with Mike Brammer, assistant manager of animal rescue services, while they were on their way to another rescue scene nearby.

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It was then, according to Brammer, that they could hear very soft mewing. A photo taken from a lowered phone showed there was at least one kitten under the building.

Brammer said he could barely get his hand into the hole under the building, but gradually, one by one, they pulled out nine kittens.

“We were there for about an hour trying to catch them,” he said.

Brammer put some food into the hole and wait until he heard a meow, before trying to fish a kitten out. Volunteers helped Brammer and Genter rescue the feral mother of the kittens, which was trapped.

Brammer said because the cat is feral, she can’t be adopted. She was spayed and then released back into the area.

At four weeks old, the kittens are too young to be adopted and will be cared for in a foster home until they’re eight weeks old.

The kittens will be socialized in their foster home and then be given a health check and be spayed/neutered when they are eight weeks before they’re ready to be adopted through the agency’s Boston shelter.

 

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