We Found The Kitten...I Hope The Owner Finds It, Too

 The dog spotted her first. Instead of instantly grabbing the ball and returning it to us, he lingered, his head low, his body sill.

He saw something.

Then, from under the fence we saw two small yellow eyes looking back. The dog barked, the kitten retreated, but after the sun set, the kitten no longer hid behind the fence. She found a way in the yard and waited for us to come back outside.

That's when she stole our hearts.

The little tuxedo kitten with a limp made her way over to my son. It was so tiny. Because it was late and hurt, we didn't want to leave her outside in case predators were about. We brought her inside the garage, gave her some food (which she ate voraciously...) and wondered what we should do. It was too late to go around the neighborhood to see if anyone was missing a kitten. We made plans.

The next day we printed "Found" posters and attached them to signs on the nearby street signs. Then, we did a little research on what to do when you find an animal. Turns out, it's illegal for us to just "adopt" it. We had to take it to a shelter. Because it was the weekend, if we didn't take it to a shelter that day, we'd be housing a new, possibly injured cat for four days.

Too, too long.

My wife and I loaded up the kitten and drove her to the shelter. It crushed the kids, but they understood we could not keep her. It crushed us, too, but we figured if someone responded to the poster, we could tell them we took the animal to the shelter and they could pick her up there. Also, the shelter said they would check out her foot and treat any issues...something we could not do ourselves.

That was last weekend. We have no idea what happened to her. Of course, we hope she found either her original owner or a new one. We'll probably never know, but, at least...we hope.