“They’re all dead,” Nicole thought as she paced around our large, wooden deck.

“Squishy hasn’t gone under there in over two days, and there’s no way two-week-old kittens could have possibly survived that long without milk.”

During those two days, with mounting concern, she had done some research to see how long young kittens can live without being fed. The consensus: (after more than 4 hours without milk (which is both food AND water for them) two-week-old kittens often require medical attention to survive). There is no way they had survived this long.

Nicole gave me her assessment and I started to think about how we might get to their bodies to prevent a foul smell from surrounding our front door. We didn’t even know how many kittens there were, because we had never seen them. Squishy (named by Chandler, our 12-year-old daughter) gave birth to them under our front deck, in an area that is impossible to access without removing the deck planks. She had spent most of her time under there taking care of them until recently. Now she never goes beneath the deck and looks like she’s about to explode due to not having an outlet for her milk.

I’m not what you would call a “cat guy”. In fact, if someone were to call me a “cat guy”, I would make sure the record was corrected immediately. Either that person does not know me at all, or if they do know me, they are cracking a joke or are using it as an insult. Yes, I would take being called a “cat guy” as an insult. Everybody knows Brian is a “dog guy”.

Being a “dog guy”, I’m pretty psychologically well-rounded and can be sympathetic, even to cats, when warranted. As such, Squishy and Toast (again named by Chandler, who loves breakfast foods and enjoys naming our animals after them. Just ask our hen, Waffles. Wait…a coyote got Waffles. Never mind. She did have a good run, though.) Where was I? As such, Squishy and Toast do kind of have a special place in our hearts. You see, one Friday evening Nicole was going to pick up pizza at Papa Murphy’s in Joplin for the four of us. As she turned left from Cedar Dr. onto Rangeline, she saw a cat in the middle of the road that had very recently been run over. As she was taking in the sad sight, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked to the side of the road and two tiny kittens, huddled safely away from the traffic, were crying for their mom. Nicole had a decision to make.

Nicole LOVES animals. But it’s not just that…she is amazing with them. Whether it’s training our beloved yellow lab, Magnus, or working with our horses in the arena, you can witness her come to life when she’s interacting with them. I’ve even seen her take a tiny doe I found under our SUV one morning, lovingly hold it as she removed all of the ticks with a pair of tweezers that were blinding it, then carefully conceal it in a wooded spot in our pasture, only to watch as the mother came back for it that evening.

THIS Nicole witnessed the two orphaned kittens and instantly decided they would become the new barn cats we had been talking about acquiring. She brought them home in a small box to a very excited daughter, and a husband who thought they were cute, but was also a tad concerned…because they were cats.

Toast and Squishy spent a lot of time growing up at our house, especially for “barn” cats, and as they got older, Nicole moved their food down to the barn to make the move official. This meant that the “barn” cats now occasionally went down to the barn to eat, but spent the majority of their waking hours by our front door, and as such became “deck” cats. Even so, with Nicole having rescued the orphaned kittens, then raising them at our house, we had all (yes, me included) grown rather attached to them.

The two spoiled cats got a bit older and their scheduled visit with the vet came up. We really wanted to ensure that the feline population at the Phillips family farm remained at dos gatos (that’s two cats in Spanish), so this pet visit was quite important. However, the day of their appointment, Nicole received a call from the vet letting her know that she would have to reschedule because that part of Joplin was temporarily without electricity.

“Did she reschedule?” you ask.

“Would I be writing this if she did?” I ask in return.

The fact that Nicole had literally rescued Squishy only increased our connection to our cats. Now, Nicole was feeling sad, even though she had never set eyes on Squishy’s offspring, and she was resigning herself to the fact that she never would.

The next morning, my phone rang, and as always, I looked to see who was calling before I answered. It was CD, my good friend and the general contractor who has been overseeing our home remodel for the past year and a half.

CD jumped right in.

“Did one of your cats have kittens?” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

“How many?”

“I don’t know, CD. We’ve never seen them. She had them under our deck. Maybe 3 or 4.”

CD sometimes had odd questions, but didn’t normally call me first thing in the morning to quiz me about kittens, so I knew something was up.

“Why?” I asked.

“Wayne took the debris trailer to the dump and after it emptied we heard crying. We were freaked out and started digging through the construction trash and found kittens….four of them.”

This is not where I thought he was going to go with this.

For most of the past year and a half we have had a dump trailer outside of our house, so I immediately assumed that Wayne (CD’s project manager) had taken the trailer directly from our house to empty it, and then bring it right back. I’ve seen them do that a dozen times. What I was about to hear, however, especially in light of what Nicole had told us about how long kittens can live without being fed, would make me wonder if the whole “9 lives” thing might not have some truth to it.

“I assume it’s them, CD, but Squishy hasn’t gone under the deck to take care of them for a while. When did Wayne grab the dump trailer?”

“Three days ago. He picked it up and took it to my office first. It sat out in the parking lot until the next day.”

“It’s 100 degrees outside, CD. And they didn’t even have water.”

“I know. Then he took it to another job where they dumped a bunch of concrete in it,” CD further explained.

“It stayed there overnight, then it came back to my office yesterday. This morning it was full, so he was going to dump it before he took it back to your place.”

“They’re definitely our kittens, then, because that’s about how long they’ve been missing.”

“Okay. That’s crazy! Wayne and I have them in a box, so we’ll bring them to your house right now.”

I hung up the phone and just stood there for a minute. “That IS crazy!” I thought.

I went into the living room where Nicole and the kids were. “So…CD just called…” and I recounted our conversation. Not long after I finished, CD and Wayne pulled up in a very familiar white truck. CD climbed out with a small box in his hands and we all went outside to meet them. Inside of the box was four crying kittens that somehow looked perfectly healthy.

Squishy must have heard her babies, and within moments, was by our side. Nicole then grabbed a bulb tote from the basement, put a towel in the bottom, and after three days of being apart, reunited a very happy mom with her babies.

Update: I originally wrote this a couple of months ago and have been meaning to wrap it up to post it, but I’m just now getting around to it. Since I originally wrote it, we have found amazing homes for 2 of the kittens and we found a new home for Toast. Nicole gets pictures from their new owners and all of them LOVE the new addition to their families.

Photo 1: Spoiler alert! The 4 kittens were not dead! This is a couple of weeks after we got them back.
Photo 2: Shortly after Squishy (right) and Toast (left) were rescued by Nicole, she gave them a much-needed bath. They loved it!
Photo 3: Squishy (left) and Toast (right) are in their rebellious teenage phase. You can tell just by looking at their expressions. “Stop taking my picture!” Toast would be saying.
Photo 4: This is the actual trailer the kittens were moved to by Squishy, most likely to get them away from the watchful eye of Ivan, my mother-in-law’s giant Schnauzer.
Photo 5: Uncle Magnus (our amazing yellow lab) LOVES the kittens! He just wants to be their friend but often gets a little overbearing and they have to scare him away.

Here are a few more pictures, just because they’re cute.